Global tech giants including Facebook and Twitter on Thursday expressed concern about a possible Singapore plan to bring in a new law to tackle the threat of fake news, saying sufficient rules are already in place. Officials of Facebook, Twitter and Google attended a parliamentary hearing on how to counter the threat that Singapore said it was particularly vulnerable to due to its size, its role as a global financial hub and its ethnic and religious mix. They were among 79 people asked to speak in parliament over the eight days set for the hearing. "Singapore already has a variety of existing laws and regulations which address hate speech, defamation and the spreading of false news." Many of the examples of fake news, cited in a Singapore government paper on deliberate online falsehoods published in January, came from abroad.

Source: dna March 22, 2018 07:58 UTC