Social networking company Facebook has expressed concern after Singapore ordered it to block access a news site's page for fake news.
Singapore ordered Facebook to block access to fringe site States Times Review on the premise that it had broken a newly introduced "fake news" law and repeatedly conveyed "falsehoods".
According to Facebook, it was "legally compelled" to comply with the order but called it "deeply concern[ing]". The tech giant added that the government directive could "stifle freedom of expression".
The law the news site's page allegedly violated was the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation bill (POFMA), which came into effect in October 2019.
The Singaporean government argued that it needs strict laws given the potential for fake news to incite racial and religious disharmony and that it needed the authority to act immediately to stop the spread of falsehoods.
A Facebook spokesman said: "We believe orders like this are disproportionate and contradict the government's claim that POFMA would not be used as a censorship tool."
"We've repeatedly highlighted this law's potential for overreach and we're deeply concerned about the precedent this sets for the stifling of freedom of expression in Singapore." the spokesman added.
According to Singapore authorities, States Times Review (STR) wrote a Facebook post in January which "falsely claimed that Singapore had run out of face masks". The article was written in relation to the current coronavirus outbreak, which has prompted people in Singapore scrambling to buy face masks.
Although the country has reported dozens of virus cases, it emphasized that it has enough supplies and has made sufficient preparations to handle the outbreak. It ordered STR to issue a correction direction but these correction directions were ignored.
The Ministry of Communications and Information ordered STR on February 15 to carry a notice saying that it was a Declared Online Location, meaning anyone who visited the page would be "warned that [it] has a history communicating falsehoods".
However, STR did not carry out the notice and instead "changed the vanity URL of the page".
