Opinion | Why Facebook and Google must do more in Southeast Asia to combat fake news

From governments to NGOs, Facebook to Google, academics to policymakers, almost everyone agrees that disinformation and fake news are a growing problem. What they tend to disagree on are the solutions.

The authorities in Southeast Asia have often preferred to introduce specific regulations and laws to provide greater tools for police to arrest citizens who create and distribute such material. But these laws are controversial and have been met with criticism from civil society groups and political opposition. Most notable was Malaysia’s 2018 anti-fake news laws introduced by the previous Barisan Nasional government, but repealed by the new administration led by Pakatan Harapan. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad argued: “When you have a law to prevent people from airing views, then we are afraid that the government itself may abuse it, as has happened in the past. We do not want any government, whether this or the next one, to abuse such a law.”

In Indonesia, the highly controversial Electronic Transactions Law was created in 2008 to address commentary online, and has been used increasingly to arrest citizens for creating or distributing hoax news. Freedom House, a US-based watchdog, in 2016 argued that the law “continues to represent a serious threat to internet freedom. Often resulting in pretrial detention, charges facilitate retaliation for online expression, even in cases that never make it to court”.

Meanwhile, global tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter have been slow to recognise the problem and the damage their platforms can cause to a society’s pluralism, public sphere and democratic quality. In Southeast Asia, these companies have funded “fact-checking” organisations whose role is to counter fake news material – first by exposing it as a hoax on their own websites, and second by establishing more direct links to platforms such as Facebook to have the fake news content taken down.