Regulation of political commentary on the Internet in Singapore

I think that political commentary on the internet should be restricted to only political leaders who are involved in elections or political parties. This is because when these politicians post comments about their party, the opposing party or the political system of the country, they would have evidence and proof of their arguments so that their comments would not affect the politics of the country unhealthily. I think that this restriction should be imposed also because politicians would not remain anonymous on the internet as they would want to show that it is their party who is on the right. Hence, this would eradicate any problem in irresponsible people in the web who posts political comments without any proof and yet remain anonymous, which would lead to false rumors spreading like wild fire across the globe as the internet is a fast, easily accessible, global communicating system. False comments from these anonymous people would also arouse doubt in the readers of a particular political party and hence, affecting the polls of the election unhealthily.

In some countries, political comments posted onto the internet which is considered false to the political parties referred to would be chased down by the government of the country even when the commenter is a foreigner. As many foreigners do not get the full picture of the political state which the country is in and the political history, most foreign commenter on the web would tend to give out false, biased or inaccurate information about the particular party or politician. However, I do not think that it is a suitable regulation in Singapore for political advertising as when the government tries to impose a punishment to the foreign commenter, the sovereignty of the foreign country would be violated since all countries have different degrees and types of punishment for this particular problem. Since the internet is a global communicating system which cuts across different countries, this regulation would never be successful unless every country in the world have a common rule for these political commenter. Also, this system may also fail because online commenters are not easy to track down as they are anonymous and hunting down every one of them would be a great consumption in time and resources as the internet is too easily accessed by the masses and Singapore has limited resources.

There is another way which governments can prevent political comments on the internet, which is to target the service providers, browsers, networks, and financial supporters of the internet in the country. They impose regulations onto these supporters of the web to filter out any unacknowledged political comments which may be a threat to the political stability of the country. Hence, readers would not be able to see these comments, therefore, the comments whether true or false would not spread and cause any inconvenience. However, I do not think that this regulation is suitable for Singapore as Singapore is a developed and advanced country which heavily relies on technology. Hence, setting up restrictions onto these internet supporters would, in one way or another, affect the usefulness of the web as there would only be limited information on it. This would then lead to damage in the country’s other developments which would not be desirable for Singapore.

However, eradicating unsubstantiated and unacknowledged political comments from the internet has its weaknesses too. As these comments brings shows the perspective of the local people who experience the political systems of the country. Hence, without these information, readers on the internet would only see the politicians’ point of view on the issue and not the holistic picture.