Sunday, January 1, 2012

Restricting Expression on the Internet

There have been a series of measures since after the May 2011 election in the online media space:

1) Channelnewsasia Market Talk forum has revamped its membership list / requirements - requiring more disclosure of personal details and increasing the amount of moderation in the group. [June 2011 or thereabouts]

2) Todayonline.com has changed its comments section to a Facebook one - you have to comment on the articles using your Facebook account. In the past, you just had to enter your email address (which was not shown publicly). [Nov 2011 or thereabouts]

3) SPH has sued Yahoo for copyright infringement. Yahoo Singapore News is a popular news website, with comments on controversial issues often going into the thousands. To comment, you just had to have a yahoo account (and email address, which was not shown publicly). [Dec 2011 or thereabouts]

Do you see a pattern here? The net result is that there has been a tightening of control over anonymous commenting in the Internet.. very soon, there will be few places with wide (mainstream) reach where you can comment anonymously, except maybe temasek review or onlinecitizen...

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