The law is designed specifically to allow authorities to respond to fake news or false information through a graduated process of enforcing links to fact-checking statements, censorship of website or assets on social media platforms, and criminal charges.
[3] While the law has existed in similar capacities in various other countries, it received criticism by some opposition politicians, human rights groups, journalists and academics.
He cited online portals such as The Real Singapore which published an article falsely claiming that a commotion between Thaipusam participants and the police was sparked by complaints from a Filipino family, the States Times Review which mocked former President S. R. Nathan with an article claiming near-zero turnout for his funeral, and All Singapore Stuff which falsely reported eye-witness accounts of a collapsed HDB roof at Punggol Waterway Terraces, subsequently wasting SPF and SCDF resources during the follow-up investigation.
[5] The Minister claimed that fake news, when not debunked, can quickly cause harm to Singaporeans, panic to public, waste emergency resources, and damage reputations of businesses and people.
[6] The Select Committee convened public hearings from 14 to 29 March 2018, lasting eight days in total, where 79 individuals and organisations were invited to testify.
[12] The POFMA came into effect on 2 October 2019,[13] with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) being the agency administering Act through a dedicated office.
[17] Through Section 8, the creation and usage of bots or enabling another person to utilise, with the intention to communicate a false statement of fact in Singapore is prohibited.
[19][20] A Stop Communication Direction may be issued as well, instructing the person to disable access of the false statement to end-users in Singapore by a specific time.
[25] The first Correction Direction was issued to Brad Bowyer, a Progress Singapore Party member, to place a correction notice on statements of falsehoods which implied that the Government controls Temasek's and GIC's commercial decisions, that billions of dollars in investments were wasted on the canned Amaravati city project, and Salt Bae's parent company, which received an investment from Temasek, was debt-laden.
[26] The PSP subsequently protested, stating that "the Act falls short of the values of transparency, independence and accountability" and that it could be used by ministers to declare a piece of news to be "falsehood, without requiring any justification, criteria or standards".
On 27 January 2020, HardwareZone forum was issued a general correction direction over a false claim of a man from Singapore having died from the COVID-19 virus.
[31][32][33][34] The Ministry of Communications and Information lifted the temporary exemption of social media platforms, search engines and Internet intermediaries from complying with POFMA.
[35][36] On 20 May 2021, on instructions from Ministry of Health, a general correction direction was issue to Twitter, Facebook, and HardwareZone forum over an allegation of an unknown 'Singapore variant' of the virus being at risk of spreading to India.
[38][39] Singapore authorities responded that the claims were "baseless falsehoods", and that the executions were conducted "in strict compliance of the law".
[44] On 28 June 2024, after a five-member Court of Appeal convened, it was determined that LFL cannot sue the Singaporean government over the issuance of the correction order in Malaysia due to sovereign immunity, but would allow the matter of extraterritoriality of POFMA Act be heard in the High Court in relation to Malaysian citizen's constitutional right to freedom of expression.
In July 2020, during the campaigning period of the general election, five correction directions were issued to the National University of Singapore Society, CNA, The Online Citizen and New Naratif by the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Manpower (MOM) jointly, taking issue on the following statements made, which the ministries said to be false:[46] In response to his interview's correction by POFMA, the Singapore Democratic Party's chairman Professor Paul Tambyah retroactively claimed that his point in the original interview was who signed a circular email rather than suggesting the email's content was not distributed without the advice of medical professionals.
[52] Both cases were heard separately, by different High Court judges, but had the same outcome: their appeals to cancel the orders were denied.
However, in September 2020, a panel of senior judges in the Court of Appeal reserved judgement on several legal issues, one of them is whether the burden of proof fell on the statement maker or the minister.
[58] During the parliamentary debate over the proposed Act, Pritam Singh of the Workers' Party, who was a member of the 13th Parliament of Singapore representing Aljunied GRC, criticised the legislation, saying that "ministers should not be the deciding body on what constitutes false matters".
[59] Pritam's fellow member, Sylvia Lim commented that the process to appeal against the orders could be "very onerous" to the applicants due to "information asymmetry between the Government and individuals".
[70] Minister Shanmugam attributed it as a mistake or inaccuracy being made by the MLC, reassuring that satire does not count as fake news.