PETALING JAYA: The Communications and Multimedia Ministry is working on a mechanism to verify the authenticity of Twitter handles and other online social media.
Its Minister Gobind Singh Deo said that it was part of bigger steps to ensure the veracity of online information accessed by the people.
He said these measures would compliment existing measures like the ministry’s website sebenarnya.my, which served as a guide for correct information on the internet.
“We have sebenarnya.my which is a portal which people can access to verify information.
“If there is something you are not sure, you can access the portal and find out more about the subject.
“But this is just the beginning as we are also trying to get all sites like Twitter handles and so forth to be verified.
“So when people when receive information from these (social media) sites, they are aware that these sites are verified and news coming from them are genuine.
“We are working in this. The MCMC (Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission, which is under the ministry) and us are looking at ways to deal with this,” he said.
Gobind was speaking during a press conference after launching the new Celcom corporate headquarters as part of the telecommunications firm’s 31st anniversary at Persiaran Barat here this afternoon.
He was commenting on the latest update on the government’s solution on invalid accounts using the name or representing the ministries and government-related agencies.
The sebenarnya.my portal was setup under the previous Barisan Nasional administration as part of efforts to combat fake news.
Among those also present were Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim and Idham Nawawi, who are Axiata Group Bhd chairman and chief executive officer respectively.
On Nov 4 last year, Gobind said that the government was in the process of determining the most appropriate method of identifying valid owners of social media accounts in the country.
He said the mechanism was crucial to ensure that the social media accounts owned by the ministry and government agencies were valid and were not abused.
