Pofma — but not for WhatsApp, so far: the 27 orders, counted

Falsehoods moving through text messaging platforms appear to have escaped the Pofma net. The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act has been used freely against websites and social media posts, but not once against a claim circulating on WhatsApp.

That is not because the messages were absent. It is because they were handled a different way.

The count

Pofma was invoked 27 times on matters relating to the virus outbreak.

More than half of those concerned claims made on Facebook by Mr Alex Tan and by the Facebook pages of his States Times Review websites — 15 of the 27.

Of the 27, 22 were directions issued to individuals or to internet intermediaries running online platforms, requiring correction of statements the government deemed false. The remaining five were used to designate Facebook pages run by Mr Tan as Declared Online Locations, cutting off their ability to earn revenue, and to order those pages disabled.

Where the 22 directions went

Of the 22 correction directions issued over coronavirus falsehoods, 20 went to Facebook and to individuals who had posted there. One went to the HardwareZone forum operated by SPH Magazines.

The claims involved were mostly false updates about the state of the outbreak in Singapore at the time. A January post on HardwareZone asserted that someone had died of the virus. An article on City News made a further claim of its own. The pattern was similar across the set: a specific factual assertion about cases, deaths or closures, made on a platform that publishes to an open audience.

Among ministries, the Health Minister was the most active user of the instrument, issuing eight Pofma directions. Half of those were against posts by Mr Tan.

What happened after the orders

15 correction directions were issued to individuals, the largest single category.

An individual who receives a correction direction is not required to take the post down — the obligation is to carry a correction notice. In practice almost everyone removed the post anyway.

Two did not. Mr Lim Tean and Mr Tan were the exceptions.

Mr Lim had claimed that a February dinner at Safra Jurong, which produced a cluster of 47 coronavirus cases, had been organised by the People’s Association. He was required to place a notice at the top of his original post telling readers it contained falsehoods, with a link to the government’s Factually website carrying the clarification.

One general correction direction was issued, over the HardwareZone post claiming a man had died of the virus. The post had already been removed before the order was made, and a forum administrator handled the notice.

Six targeted correction directions went to Facebook, requiring correction notices to be attached to specific posts. Users in Singapore encountering those posts would see the notice and a link to Factually. None of the posts that received a targeted correction direction remain available online.

One of those six concerned posts by two people who falsely claimed that Woodlands MRT had been closed for disinfection after a suspected case. Whether Facebook attached the notice in that instance is not clear from the public record.

Targeted correction directions were used mostly against Mr Tan’s posts — which is consistent with his having complied with no previous correction direction.

The States Times Review history

Mr Tan’s sites had been dealt with before, under different legislation. The Infocomm Media Development Authority blocked States Times Review under the Broadcasting Act in November 2018, after it refused to remove an article claiming Singaporean involvement in laundering funds connected to Malaysia.

Blocking a site did not end the output. Operating from Australia, Mr Tan continued posting about Singapore through Facebook pages under a succession of names — States Times Review, Singapore States Times, and most recently National Times Singapore.

That succession is the practical reason five of the 27 Pofma uses were designations and disabling orders rather than corrections. A correction direction addresses a statement. A page that reappears under a new name is not a statement.

What happened to the messages instead

At least 18 bogus text messages were debunked through Factually, the government’s fact-checking website, rather than through any Pofma instrument. Those clarifications were published as notices.

Others never reached the website at all and were dealt with directly. When rumours circulated on WhatsApp that police officers were checking homes, the police addressed it through a Facebook post on Sunday 10 May. When claims spread that Singapore was about to enter a lockdown, or that the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition level would be raised to red, ministers denied them through their own channels.

The consequence is arithmetical: the real number of falsehoods requiring rebuttal is considerably higher than the number listed on Factually, and higher again than the 27 Pofma actions suggest.

Why the instrument stops at the app

The Act operates on communication that is made available to the public in Singapore, and its remedies are shaped for platforms that publish: correct the post, attach a notice, cut the page’s revenue, disable it.

A message forwarded through a private chat does not sit anywhere that a correction notice can be attached to. There is no post to annotate, no page to designate, and no intermediary displaying it to an open audience. The same falsehood that would attract a correction direction on Facebook arrives on a phone with no surface for the remedy to act on.

So the response shifts to the only thing available: publish the rebuttal somewhere else, as loudly as possible, and hope it travels along the same paths as the claim.

What that leaves

The instrument and the problem are not aligned. Pofma reaches the falsehoods that are published and leaves the ones that are forwarded, and the second category is at least as large — 18 recorded on Factually plus an unknown number handled directly, against 27 Pofma actions in total.

Whether that gap is a defect or a boundary is a genuine question. Extending correction powers into private messaging would require a mechanism that does not currently exist, and the reason it does not exist is that the messages are private. The current position is that the falsehoods on those platforms are answered rather than ordered corrected.

What the four instruments actually are

The Act provides several distinct remedies, and the counts above only make sense once they are separated.

A correction direction requires the person who made the statement to carry a notice saying it contains a falsehood, with a link to the government’s clarification. It does not require removal. This was the most-used instrument, with 15 going to individuals.

A targeted correction direction goes to the intermediary rather than to the author, requiring the platform to attach the notice to the post for users in Singapore. It is the instrument for a person who will not comply themselves, which is why it was used mostly against Mr Tan.

A general correction direction requires a broader notice, not tied to correcting one author’s post. One was issued.

A Declared Online Location designation applies to a site or page that has repeatedly carried falsehoods. It cuts off the ability to earn revenue and can be paired with an order to disable the page. Five of the 27 uses were of this kind.

The escalation is visible in the sequence: correct, then correct over the author’s head, then remove the economics, then remove the page.

The appeal route

A person subject to a direction may apply to the minister who issued it to cancel or vary it, and if refused, may appeal to the High Court. The Act provides for the court fee to be waived for that appeal.

Very few appeals have been brought relative to the number of directions issued. The practical reason is timing: a correction notice is complied with immediately, while an appeal takes time, so the notice has already done its work by the time any hearing happens. Whatever the outcome, the post carried the notice in the interval.

That asymmetry is one of the standing criticisms of the design, and it is structural rather than incidental — an instrument that acted only after adjudication would not address a falsehood moving at the speed these were.

Why this period is the useful test

The outbreak months compressed a year of ordinary use into a few weeks, which is what makes the pattern legible.

Falsehoods arrived continuously, they were specific and checkable — a death, a closure, a lockdown, a raised alert level — and the cost of believing them was immediate. If the instrument was going to be used at full stretch, it was going to be then.

It was, twenty-seven times, and every one landed on something published. That is the finding. Not that the messaging platforms were ignored, but that the rebuttals aimed at them had to take a different form, and that form leaves no record in the Pofma count at all.

Where these figures come from

The count of Pofma invocations, the breakdown between correction directions and Declared Online Location designations, and the recipients of each are drawn from the government’s published Pofma records and the corresponding clarifications on Factually. The 2018 blocking of States Times Review under the Broadcasting Act was announced by the Infocomm Media Development Authority. Parliamentary debate on the Act and on its use is in Hansard, the official verbatim record of proceedings published by the Parliament of Singapore.

The orders counted here sit alongside the other counts in every note.