SINGAPORE: "Facebook cannot be trusted to regulate itself", a Democratic US lawmaker, Representative David Cicilline, said last week. A recent New York Times report "makes clear that Facebook executives will always put their massive profits ahead of the interests of their customers", he said. In Singapore, Senior Minister of State for Law Edwin Tong echoed similar sentiments when he said Singapore "cannot rely on the goodwill" of social media platforms to protect the nation from disinformation campaigns. As calls to regulate social media grow worldwide, legislative options include censorship and changes to how the networks operate, while education offers perhaps the best inoculation against fake news. CALLS FOR REGULATION In September, the Singapore Parliament's Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods recommended combating those falsehoods with both education and legislation. This month, the will to regulate social media may have gotten a boost in Singapore. Completely unfounded claims linking Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to Malaysia's 1MDB scandal circulated on the States Times Review's website and its Facebook page. The Info-communications Media Development Authority ordered the site to take down the article. When it refused , IMDA ordered local Internet service providers to block access to the site. IMDA asked Facebook… Read full this story
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