My name is Victor Tan. I am a Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam (JPA) scholar at the University of Chicago and also was previously an intern at Malaysiakini . Thus, I represent the Malaysian government, and also in some sense, this particular news portal, as its fate is tied to mine.
Hence I write this article with the aim of reforming and refining our government’s positions, perhaps indirectly, certainly not directly, your government is not a uniform entity, it never has been, nor does it pretend to be.
Recently, there has been a lot of bad press about the Malaysian government. People talk in hushed tones about 1MDB, blame the civil service for issues, talk about the Wall Street Journal , etc. We as a country are vilified by ourselves in a self-referential angst, and a growing groundswell of negativity is rising against the government.
The latest piece of interesting news that our government has generated is that, well, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has started blocking news portals. Why? We’ve had the 1MDB investigation reveal some new facts and the current regime in power is trying to stop that bad press.
It wasn’t just The Malaysian Insider , it was also a mishmash of other online portals. The government had believed that the suppression would yield some results, but on the contrary, quite the opposite had happened.
Rather than have people stop sharing news from the portals concerned, perversely enough, the posts made on Malaysiakini get shared 842 times in the span of no more than three hours. Assuming each share goes out to a friend list of about 1,000 people on average, and perhaps 50 percent of them would read it by accident if the Facebook algorithm is working right, then essentially 400,000 people have seen it in an hour.
This is more people than those who would look at Malaysiakini’s online edition in a day.
Ten years ago, what’s happening now would never have happened. You could never have an attempt to block a news article go so, so wrong. Fan followings are these gigantic networks of people who can be mobilised in any direction if they are targeted the right way. It’s even more effective than politics because it’s citizen democracy.
And I think that where we’re at in the world now really illustrates a part of our collective history as a people, because, well, social media unites all of us. No government would choose to block Facebook because of the political consequences except China, and any government that had embarked on that path would eventually fracture and come to nothing.
Additionally, I believe that the current regime of power had wanted to block the Internet, only to realize that everyone on Facebook could just comment about using Google DNS to access the page instead. And they did, in droves, criticising the government more in a single day than it had been criticised likely in a year. In effect, what has happened is that we have gained a better system of democracy, from an entity that isn’t the government itself.
It’s social media against government, and in just a few years, it’s clear which party will win.
More FB users than actual registered voters
And I don’t just mean that in terms of some kind of wishy-washy Democrat versus Republican primary debate, as is commonly seen in the US. I mean that in 2019, Malaysia is projected to have 13.2 million Facebook users, or just 100,000 shy of the vote count in the 2013 general election. In 2020 then, we will likely have more Facebook users than actual registered voters.
What then in 10 years, 20 years? What if people grow up and social media activism takes off and people actually get themselves on the streets and govern themselves in a different way?
It doesn’t matter what Facebook’s original intention was or what the Malaysian government had wanted to achieve, what has happened has happened, and the Malaysiakini example has beautifully illustrated the fact that it is not social media’s functionality that matters, but rather what it is used for - ushering in a new age of activism for those of us who care.
Call it being a keyboard warrior, but we live in an age where, all that needs to happen for the entire Malaysian population to know about Internet blocking is for every single person to share this on their walls, for each person to firstly do their part via social media, and then in real life.
Paradoxically enough, since sharing posts gives you exponentially more traffic than liking them does, although the regime might have succeeded at keeping this down low if it hadn’t blocked the news portals, now it is inevitable that the entire population will find out.
All because of Facebook, and the Internet.
Nowadays, it is completely fruitless to block anything because the way that’s the world works. But it’s not as if that’s new. It’s true that people can just share with and message one another and apparently, you can even share emotions over Facebook now.
Once, this exchange would take place between traders and merchants in the marketplaces selling silk and perfumes from exotic lands, but now it takes place in the blink of an eye and can be instantly perpetuated the moment someone decides to press a button.
How ridiculous would it be for a country to shut down the Internet? Cannot, otherwise people cannot watch iFlix. #rugibesarbesar
Social media has proved to be an incredible fascinating way of uniting people and directing them toward action. And now, the social is absolute, and the face of all can be seen.
What can I say? Malaysia has just illustrated all of this on the world stage, we look ridiculous. But what can I say? The sun is out, life goes on, social media continues to move forward into the universe, and I’m glad that the world has started to change for the better.
VICTOR TAN was previously an intern with Malaysiakini , and is a current third year student in Economics at the University of Chicago on a scholarship from Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam. He has written for the Malaysian Insider, Scientific Malaysian, and interviews Uber drivers across different cities with his photography project, Humans of Ridesharing.
