Singapore Plans Law to Fight False News, but Critics Fear Repression

HONG KONG — Singapore introduced draft legislation on Monday that it said would combat false or misleading information on the internet, but critics said the measure could be used as a cudgel against the government’s critics. “This bill targets falsehoods, not free speech,” the Ministry of Law said in a statement outlining the legislation. Kirsten Han, a Singaporean journalist and activist, described the legislation as “worryingly broad.”
“The bill gives ministers so much power and discretion — any minister can direct individuals or websites to post corrections or take down content, or order access to content to be blocked, and these orders have to be complied with first, even if one is going to appeal the direction in the courts,” Ms. According to a draft of the bill, punishments for some violations could include fines of up to about $44,000 and a prison term of up to six years for individuals, or fines of up to about $738,000 in “any other case.”

Critics say the bill could put a wide range of online publishers in legal jeopardy in Singapore, including foreign media organizations. The “public interest” definitions are so vague, they add, that the legislation could be weaponized to target the government’s critics. Singapore holds elections, but there has never been a change of power as a result, and the government has long exerted control over the domestic news media through defamation suits. The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 151st of 180 countries in its Press Freedom Index, three places behind Russia. The draft legislation is hardly the first of its kind. Governments including those of Russia and of South Korea have recently put so-called false news in their cross hairs. “We will study the bill to determine our next steps, and urge the government to allow for a full and transparent public consultation on the proposed legislation.”
Simon Milner, Facebook’s vice president for public policy in the Asia-Pacific region, said in a statement that the social network supported regulation that “strikes the right balance between reducing harm while protecting people’s rights to meaningful speech.”
“We are, however, concerned with aspects of the law that grant broad powers to the Singapore executive branch to compel us to remove content they deem to be false and proactively push a government notification to users,” he added. Companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter were once lauded for leading free speech and public discourse into a new age. As skepticism has risen, the platforms have taken measures to combat bogus or harmful information, with varying degrees of success. But controversies have continued to erupt. That way, the companies can deflect the blame if the policies cause dissatisfaction. In an op-ed over the weekend in The Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, made a case for regulating his platform, calling for “a more active role for governments and regulators.”

“We need a more standardized approach,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “Regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum.”
On Monday, Jeff Paine, the managing director of the Asia Internet Coalition — whose members include Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter and other technology firms — said the group supported Singapore’s efforts to protect harmony, social cohesion, and the integrity of the country’s institutions and political processes. But Mr. Paine said the group worried that the bill “gives the Singapore government full discretion over what is considered true or false.”
“As the most far-reaching legislation of its kind to date, this level of overreach poses significant risks to freedom of expression and speech, and could have severe ramifications both in Singapore and around the world,” he said. Mr. Mr. Lee told guests that the city-state was “particularly vulnerable” to false news because it was a multiracial, multiethnic society with “enduring fault lines that can be easily exploited.”
Channel NewsAsia covered Mr. Lee’s remarks, but without mentioning that the government’s campaigns against misinformation have generated criticism from free speech advocates.