In accordance with Yang di Pertuan Agong’s advice to avoid political uncertainty amidst Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysians should be especially alert to the blizzard of fake news and false impressions perpetrated by social media influencers

The Yang di Pertuan Agong Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah has repeated his call to not plunge the country into another round of political uncertainty amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

In accordance with the Yang di Pertuan Agong’s advice to avoid political uncertainty amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysians should be especially alert to the blizzard of fake news and false impressions perpetrated by social media influencers.

A good case in point is the Coverage report yesterday making use of a four-year-old report to manufacture the false impression that I support DAP working with Najib Razak and Zahid Hamidi to form a new national government to replace the Muhyiddin Yassin backdoor government.

The devilish Coverage piece went viral on the social media giving the false impression that I want the DAP to co-operate with Najib and Zahid to topple Muhyiddin, but die-hard DAP supporters know that the DAP leaders will not compromise their integrity and principles to co-operate with kleptocrats.

In the United States, a former fundraiser for US President Donald Trump is expected to plead guilty next Tuesday to charges of illegally lobbying Trump to drop an investigation into a massive 1MDB financial scandal, but in Malaysia, former Prime Minister and key 1MDB personality Najib Razak still denies there was a 1MDB scandal.

We Malaysians do not want to be United States, whose President Trump was recently identified in various studies of various prestigious universities as the main vector of misinformation and fake news.

Malaysians must develop a high degree of media literacy to ensure that they do not become victims of misinformation and disinformation, whether fake news or false impressions, like the Coverage report yesterday.

I am thankful to the DAP MP for Kluang, Wong Shu Qi who did excellent detective work to ferret out the shadowy characters behind this MCA-related website (https://link.medium.com/jA8ElWgJCab) and drag them out into the limelight.

It will be interesting to probe as to why this MCA-related website wants to perpetrate the false impression that the DAP is like the MCA and is prepared to work with Najib.

But it is more important, however, that Malaysians should become the most sophisticated social media users in this information age with a high degree of media literacy, able to detect all forms of misinformation and disinformation, whether fake news and false impressions disseminated by paid cybertroopers or bots.