Just recently, States Times Review Facebook page was branded as a Declared Online Location by POFMA.
No, that doesn’t mean they can declare their locations online.
What this means is that the owner of the page will not be able to earn any money from their page.
Just when you thought that was the end of their woes, this happened.
Facebook Told To Disable Access To States Times Review (STR) FB Page
On 17 Feb 2020, it was reported that the Singapore Government has asked Facebook to disable access to the STR Facebook Page for Singapore users.
They gave the order to Facebook under Section 34 of POFMA, which was implemented in Oct 2019. Section 34 is an “Order to internet intermediary to disable access to declared online location.”
The Facebook Page has clashed with the government multiple times and was recently served correction notices for “conveying falsehoods” about the Covid-19 situation in Singapore.
As of the time of writing, we are unable to access the States Times Review Facebook Page.
Going All Out
The States Times Review mainly provide contents for super angry and super anti-establishment Singaporeans.
By disabling Singaporeans’ access to their Facebook page, they take away their distribution channel.
But that’s not all.
If you remember, IMDA has also removed access to the States Times Review website for Singaporeans.
All in all, this means that the amount of influence (and reach) that the States Times Review has in Singapore has been completely nullified.
Though, if you use Google DNS server (8.8.8.8) or any third party DNS server instead of your default ISP DNS server, you can still go in.
Declared Online Location
According to the POFMA website, it’s an online location that “have carried three or more different online falsehoods which are the subject of active Directions issued by POFMA Office under Ministerial instruction within a period of 6 months, prior to the Declaration.”
So, in other words, if you are flagged thrice, you’ll be in this registry.
And in the registry, there’s only one page so far:
As mentioned by POFMA, websites in the Declared Online Location will not be allowed to profit from spreading falsehoods in Singapore.
States Times Review has mentioned a few times that they’re shutting down (by themselves), and it seems the time has finally arrived.
