Govt sets up committee to study problem of deliberate online falsehoods

SINGAPORE — As a small and diverse country with high Internet penetration, Singapore can suffer disastrous consequences from the spread of falsehoods online.

This was stressed on Wednesday (Jan 10) by Ministers and Members of Parliament (MPs) who unanimously backed a motion by Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam to appoint a Select Committee to study ways to deal with the scourge.

Apart from Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim who also weighed in on the problem, a total of 11 MPs — seven from the People’s Action Party (PAP) and four Nominated MPs — rose to speak during the three-hour debate.

At the end of the session, all 80 MPs present in the House voted in favour, following the division bell called by Mr Shanmugam.

In a division, the vote of each MP is collected and tabulated through an electronic voting system to ascertain whether the motion has the support of two-thirds of the total number of elected MPs.

The 10-member Select Committee will be chaired by Deputy Speaker Charles Chong and consist of seven other PAP MPs, a Workers’ Party MP and one NMP. The inclusion of an NMP, in place of an MP from the ruling party, was to provide “more diversity” on the panel, said Mr Shanmugam.

The Republic has fallen victim to foreign interference in the past, said Mr Shanmugam. He cited an instance of how The Singapore Herald, a newspaper here that was financed by a Malaysian politician, had launched a misinformation campaign against National Service in the early 1970s. Its publishing license was suspended by the Government in May 1971.

“Wide spreading of falsehoods can drown out the facts, can cause people to be disillusioned, and can be manipulated to create rifts and damage social cohesion… Falsehoods tend to be focused on playing with people’s feelings and getting them to be angry by putting forward points which are completely fabricated,” he said.

In another example, The Eastern Sun — an English-daily which was published in Singapore in the early years — was supported by a Communist intelligence agency in Hong Kong on the condition that it would publish issues aligned with the communists’ agenda. The paper closed voluntarily in 1971.

Singapore was fortunate to have nipped these in the bud, but such orchestrated campaigns can “wreak even more harm” in today’s digital world, said Dr Yaacob.

“In the Internet age, falsehoods can go viral in seconds… Anyone can publish or share falsehoods online, even from halfway around the world. The net result is that online falsehoods can destabilise societies far more easily than ever before,” he said.

In Singapore, more than nine in 10 households (91 per cent) have access to the Internet — one of the highest digital penetration rates in the world.

Nee Soon GRC MP Lee Bee Wah recounted her personal experience of the 1969 racial riots, spurred by rumours about the Malay’s atrocities against the Chinese in Malaysia, which aggravated tensions between the two groups in Singapore.

“My younger brother was just born then. I remember my mother telling us once, ‘If the Malays come knocking on our doors, we have to flee. But we will leave your brother behind.’ As an eight-year-old then, I felt helpless on hearing what she said and could only hope that day would never come,” she said in Mandarin.

While rumour-mongering is not a new phenomenon, the spread of online falsehoods and its impact on communities have reached “unprecedented levels”, said Jurong GRC MP Rahayu Mahzam. She added that one of her “greatest fears” is that online falsehoods could trigger anger against the Muslim community here.

While the MPs supported the move to convene a Select Committee, they were divided on the need to introduce laws to tackle the issue.

Mdm Rahayu, for instance, felt that legislation is a “nature and obvious response”, but it should be part of a wider, multi-pronged toolbox that involves complementary measures such as public education.

Agreeing, Holland-Bukit Timah GRC MP Christopher de Souza said empowering people to discern between truth and lies is of “paramount importance”.

“What is important is discernment, and not just disbelief…Only (with discernment) can we increase our resistance to the insidiousness of falsehood,” he said.

NMP Mahdev Mohan pointed out that existing laws, such as the Defamation Act, Sedition Act and the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, often provide for appropriate remedies. Instead of drafting new laws, he called for the Government to raise digital literacy among vulnerable groups, including the elderly and youths.

The extent of government involvement to address the problem requires “deep discussion”, said Marine Parade GRC MP Seah Kian Peng.

“Heavy-handed legislation may backfire on the Government acting as judge, jury and executioner of what constitutes credible information. We may end up freezing free speech online,” he said.

Too much reliance on legislation may also weaken the people’s ability discern fact from fiction by themselves, he added.

The MPs who spoke during the debate also raised a myriad of suggestions, such as tapping social media influencers to debunk false news and setting up a network of netizens or journalists to promptly report inaccuracies that they spot online.

But the consensus among them was clear: The spread of online falsehoods is a huge problem that warrants immediate attention.

“The Government should not — and should not want to — protect us from our mistakes. Surely it is a fundamental tenet of our democratic system that people should be allowed to make their own decisions,” Mr Seah said. “But it is also true that people have a right to expect that the political leaders that they have put in place carry a duty — to ensure that (the people’s) decision making environment… is not populated by intentional falsehoods.”