It's been one month since the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulations Act (POFMA) was first invoked by the government.

On Nov. 25, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat instructed the POFMA Office to issue a correction direction against Brad Bowyer.

Bowyer, who is a member of the Progress Singapore Party (PSP), made a number of claims in a Facebook post on Nov. 13.

Government fact-checker site Factually set out a comprehensive list of rebuttals to his claims, which you can read here.

1. Brad Bowyer on investment decisions made by Temasek and GIC

Although Factually responded to all the points made by Bowyer, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) only rebutted one of the claims he made, which was that the government was involved in the individual investment decisions made by Temasek and GIC.

MOF said in a press release:

"It is necessary to state this for the record: GIC and Temasek operate on a commercial basis, and the Government is not involved in their individual investment decisions."

Bowyer complied with the Correction Direction and included a Correction Notice in his Facebook post, which links to Factually.

2. States Times Review on fake page

The next time the POFMA button was hit, it was in response to a post from the States Times Review (STR) Facebook page.

Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam issued a correction direction against a Facebook post by STR.

This post claimed that a so-called "whistleblower" from the satirical Facebook group NUS - Students United had been arrested for "exposing" the "Christian affiliations" of a potential PAP candidate.

In a statement shared with Mothership, the group said that "whatever States Times Review said about our situation is fake news. At least for now."

If you're interested, you can read about that whole saga below:

3. Facebook received instructions from POFMA

However, STR Editor Alex Tan refused to comply with the correction direction.

He claimed that he did not have to do so, as he was allegedly an Australian citizen.

In response, the POFMA Office commenced investigations against Tan.

Shanmugam also instructed the POFMA Office to issue a targeted correction direction against STR's Facebook post, marking the third use of the Act, and the first time that POFMA was invoked against a social media platform.

Unlike Tan, Facebook complied, and the STR post was tagged with a notice informing readers that "Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information."

4. POFMA used against SDP posts

The fourth use of POFMA was also the first time it was used against a Singaporean political party.

The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) claimed in two Facebook posts and an article on its website dated June 2019 that local PMET unemployment with Singapore was rising.

Manpower Minister Josephine Teo instructed the POFMA Office to issue correction directions on all three posts.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) cited its Comprehensive Labour Force Survey, which stated that local PMET employment had risen steadily since 2015.

The SDP responded and said that they were going off media reports.

However, MOM replied to that, and said that SDP's interpretation of the employment statistics was wrong.

SDP plans to challenge POFMA decision

The SDP did include correction notices on its posts, as ordered by the POFMA Office.

But in another first, SDP shared with Mothership that it plans to apply to Teo, asking her to cancel the correction direction.

POFMA also allows for a court challenge in the event that a Minister refuses the application.

5. Lim Tean's POFMA order

POFMA was invoked again on December 16, this time by Education Minister Ong Ye Kung.

The fifth use of POFMA was the first against the leader of a political party -- Lim Tean of the People's Voice.

According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), Lim had implied in Facebook posts that MOE spends less on local students than it does on foreign students.

You can read MOE's clarification on the matter here.

Lim complied with the order and included correction notices in his posts, but called POFMA a "Cry Baby legislation" and said he was considering legal options.

By the numbers

So in the month since POFMA was first invoked, it has been used five times in four different cases in total, against:

• A member of a political party.
• A leader of a political party.
• A political party.
• A Facebook page.
• Facebook itself.

PSP also made a public statement criticising POFMA, saying it was not "transparent" or "accountable enough", which was rebutted by the Ministry of Communications and Information and the Ministry of Law.

Need for speed

During the public debate on POFMA, before the legislation was passed, Shanmugam wrote a commentary piece on the need for the Act in response to public statements made by senior lawyers and Nominated Members of Parliament.

Shanmugam said there were four things that they could all agree on, including the fact that "The government needs to have the power to move quickly to deal with the problem."

During the second reading of the Bill in May 2019, Senior Minister of State for Law Edwin Tong emphasised the need to quickly respond to viral falsehoods.

According to CNA:

"He mentioned how during the Select Committee process, some representatives preferred a Court order to an executive direction.

However, Mr Tong said that “even an expedited court process may not be fast enough to deal with the virality”.

"Falsehoods can reach many with great speed, and lead to serious consequences just as quickly,” he said. “The essence of the remedies … have to be able to address and counter the quick, wide and deep spread of falsehoods.""

Gap of several days

However, the uses of the POFMA so far have come several days after the offending posts were shared. For example:

1. Bowyer's Facebook post was shared on Nov. 13, while MOF announced the use of POFMA was on Nov. 25.
2. For STR, its post was shared on Nov. 23, while MHA announced the use of POFMA on Nov. 28.
3. SDP's website article was shared in June earlier this year, while its Facebook posts were shared on Nov. 30 and Dec. 2. MOM announced its use of POFMA on Dec. 14.
4. Meanwhile, Lim Tean's posts were shared on Dec. 12 and MOE announced the use of POFMA on Dec. 16.

It could simply be the case that the Ministries were aware of the posts, but they needed the time to discuss the necessity of using POFMA.

But it could also be argued that the posts containing falsehoods were not all that viral in the first place.

Former Straits Times Associate Editor Bertha Henson noted in a Dec. 21 blog post that the use of POFMA did not appear to be urgent:

"I also note that one reason for Pofma is that it is fast-acting. The initial cases, however, don’t even seem to bear marks of urgency. The first Pofma, for example, was issued 12 days after the post was published."

Need for all the facts, but some facts reside with the government

It appeared that former media veterans are some of the only ones critically analysing the use of POFMA.

Former Chief Editor of Today, PN Balji, wrote an opinion piece for Yahoo News on Dec. 20 outlining his thoughts on the government's use of POFMA.

He noted that the government has shown little hesitation to define fake news "very narrowly" by going after those who write opinion posts based on some facts, but not the full facts.

However, this will leave the government with the upper hand. Importantly, Balji said,

"Two, the government will always win because it has all the facts, many of them not in the public domain, and will use them to prove that it is right."

In his Parliament speech in May earlier this year, Workers' Party chief Pritam Singh noted this "asymmetry" of access to information during political discussions conducted by members of the public:

"By their very nature, such discussions are also limited and even exaggerated sometimes because of a lack of disclosure by the Government or the absence of any freedom of information regime to equalise the asymmetry between the information and facts available to Executive as compared to general public."

In her blog post, Henson said, "The initial cases disappoint because there are too many grey areas that people can argue over. It has become a case of “The Government has said so, so challenge it if you dare.”"

She added that the government could have provided replies and counters to the posts without needing to use POFMA:

"Looking at the examples, the G could have simply continued the practice of giving official responses, rather than get what it wants the Pofma way. Engaging people is pretty standard fare for any government anywhere in the world."

Top image from POFMA Office, Lim Tean, Brad Bowyer, States Times Review and SDP's Facebook pages.