This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 19, 2024 - February 25, 2024

My favourite team, Manchester United, which I consider to be the biggest name in the football world, launched its own Social Media Code (SMC) last week. This move, said the club, is necessary and comes “after the number of engagements flagged as abusive or discriminatory across the Manchester United social media platforms and channels have increased over recent years”.

The SMC is to ensure “everyone understands what is acceptable and what is potentially harmful when engaging with the club, its supporters, players and staff on social media”. The SMC clearly defines what is acceptable in the online community and what behaviour will not be tolerated.

The club revealed that 640,000 postings had been identified as being unacceptable in 2022, and that number had quadrupled as at early this year. While social media platforms are crucial for effective engagement between Manchester United and its local and global supporters and followers (numbering 1.1 billion by some estimates), the club is taking a proactive step to keep “social media a safe place for the wider football family”.

The club’s chief content officer Ian Nolan added: “We are proud to be an inclusive and diverse football club where everyone engaging with our social media accounts can feel welcome. We understand football is an emotive game and tensions can often run high but our commitment to preventing abuse and discriminatory behaviour on social media is unwavering. It is important we continue to work collectively to create a respectful online environment for everyone.”

The club said it regularly monitors all of its social media channels for discriminatory or hateful comments and messages, proactively dealing with those that contravene or breach the SMC. This may include removing posts, blocking users and reporting cases to the relevant authorities.

If sports and football commentaries over social media and online platforms have become so toxic and give rise to unhealthy developments (for example, in the case of the relentless abuse of Manchester United and England centre-back Harry Maguire  by the media and on social media platforms after he suffered a dip in form), then the negative impact of toxic news and commentaries on politics would be more immense. 

In a country like Malaysia, such toxic news and commentaries on politics, where lies and slander became the norm, could cause racial and religious tensions and, if not curbed, could affect the peace and stability of the nation.

For me, someone who has clocked up 40 years of journalism, and the many journalists from my generation who were trained to regard accuracy and impartiality as the most important criteria in our reporting, what is happening over the internet and social media — where disinformation and misinformation dominate in the name of digital democracy — is appalling.

Yes, the world wide web (www) and the internet have democratised information, news and commentaries. Now anyone can become a journalist and a commentator, which is greatly welcomed as it means that big news organisations no longer have a monopoly over news and views.

However, in an uncontrolled environment where discipline is missing in news processing and dissemination, it seems that accuracy and truth are no longer important or relevant for some. The www, to them, is akin to the lawlessness and unruly world of the Wild Wild West.

Some proponents of digital democracy feel that what is more important is that freedom of speech and expression is now unbridled, and what is news and information is no longer dominated by governments, news organisations, media magnates and businesses. The people now have gained the voice that they never had.

But at what price? The speed at which news spreads, even if it is untrue, has overtaken accuracy and truth. The news verification process, to check and double-check facts, is no longer needed nor practised. Misinformation, disinformation, lies and slander have become part of today’s news content and information.

The liberation of news and commentaries has given a voice to those who were unheard before but it has also provided a way for people to be vicious, impolite and personal in their comments, swear freely and run down views that they don’t agree with, instead of criticising objectively.

Death threats can be made in a click against anyone with whom you do not agree. The recent case involving lawyer Nik Elin Zurina Nik Abdul Rashid following her successful constitutional challenge of a Kelantan syariah enactment is an example. Worse still, many of those who post hate speech hide behind the anonymity that the internet provides, although some are still trackable.

With artificial intelligence (AI) technology coming to the fore, expect matters to worsen. AI-generated fake news and disinformation, with audio and video cloning, are something the world and governments have to grapple with and counter.

Hugely profitable platform providers and owners like Meta (which runs Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads), Alphabet (YouTube and Google), X-Corp (X, or Twitter previously) and ByteDance (TikTok), can do much more in controlling disinformation and fake news and block or moderate hateful comments. They can help to instil some discipline in the social media scene but they seem disinterested in doing so or in working with governments to reduce the toxicity level.

So, just like Manchester United has done, we as a nation must also do our part to manage the situation before it gets out of control. We cannot leave the monitoring to the platform owners as they do not seem to care about making it part of their responsibility. As creators of the platforms who make huge profits, they should be able to finance and bolster the monitoring system.

Here in Malaysia, there are enough laws to cover what is deemed as libel, slander, sedition, defamation, fake news and sensitive matters that touch on race, religion and royalty — all of which can disrupt racial harmony and stability. But using laws is sometimes seen as an attempt by the government of the day to impose control over the masses. Proponents of freedom of the press and information are always against this.

It is good to know that the government wants to promote a self-regulatory mechanism too, to help manage content over the media and internet. One initiative is the Malaysian Media Council Bill, which is expected to be tabled in the upcoming parliamentary session.

The media council — which is expected to be run mostly by media practitioners and will be partly funded by the government initially — would, among others, come up with a code that promotes ethical and responsible conduct. It will also encourage responsible publishing that encompasses fair, balanced and accurate reporting.

The council is expected to have mechanisms to allow aggrieved parties to lodge complaints if news reports and headlines are not accurate, fair or ethical, and if journalists have violated journalistic ethics.

Furthermore, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has set up an independent body, the Content Forum, to oversee and promote self-regulation over the electronic network medium, which covers social media practitioners, influencers, key opinion leaders and content creators, so that they too can promote healthy content creation and ethical practices.

MCMC has also set up the Online Harms and Information Security committee to cover over-the-top (OTT) streaming services and e-commerce platforms, on which many scammers operate and where a lot of disinformation is being disseminated.

One task of the committee is to address the issue of anonymity and provide immediate identity disclosure, registration and regulation, and a central registry for anti-scam measures. Platforms hosting fake news and defamatory content, the committee suggests, must be held liable for failing to provide the identity of the party posting the material to the person defamed.

In an ideal world, self-regulation should work but we know that it will never happen as not all people are responsible enough. There are many unscrupulous people who take advantage of the good that the internet provides.

So, laws need to be imposed and government intervention needs to be imminent. The governments of the world must take the lead and become monitors and impose rules even if the public, media practitioners and businesses do not like it.

Sander van der Linden, professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge and author of Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity, warned in a special edition of Wired magazine — The Wired World in 2024, which tracks technology trends this year — that targeted AI-generated misinformation is going to have real-world consequences for elections and economies.

He said hundreds of AI-generated news sites are already popping up, propagating false stories and videos. “It is one thing to dupe people with AI-generated disinformation in experiments. It’s another to experiment with our democracy. In 2024 (when many countries are going to hold elections, while Pakistan and Indonesia have completed theirs, India’s turn is in April/May and the US’ in November) we will see more deepfakes, voice cloning, identity manipulation and AI-produced fake news. (Eventually) governments will seriously limit — if not ban the use of AI — in political campaigns. Because if they don’t, AI will undermine democratic elections.”

Politics and nations’ peace and stability, after all, are much more important than football.

Azam Aris is an editor emeritus at The Edge

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