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RECENT digital governance efforts, such as the automatic licensing of large social media platforms as Application Service Providers, are often criticised on the grounds that broad regulatory tools will inevitably lead to overreach and self-censorship.

This argument rests on the assumption that regulation itself poses a greater danger than inaction. In practice, it elevates speculative fears of overreach above the demonstrable consequences of digital deregulation: mass misinformation, coordinated manipulation and the erosion of shared reality.

Policy should be grounded in evidence, not in anxieties about what regulation might do while ignoring what its absence already has. The real question is not whether speech should be free but whether powerful digital systems should be accountable.

The United States offers a useful case study. Its exceptionally broad free-speech protections for platforms were intended to preserve open discourse. Instead, they produced an environment where the loudest, angriest and least accurate voices dominate – because those voices are the most profitable to amplify.

Election denialism following the 2020 presidential election spread rapidly across major platforms, contributing to a violent attempt to overturn a democratic outcome and leaving millions convinced of fraud despite the absence of evidence.

Vaccine misinformation, boosted by engagement-driven algorithms, has led to declining vaccination rates and the return of diseases such as measles that had been unseen for decades.

Climate change misinformation represents the most damaging expression of this failure: despite overwhelming scientific consensus, false claims questioning its existence, causes, or urgency are routinely amplified, delaying public action on a crisis whose consequences compound with every year of inaction.

The answer to potential abuse is not the absence of rules, but better rules: clear standards, due process, transparency and appeal. Deregulation does not eliminate power; it removes accountability. Responsibility is merely concentrated in fewer, less visible hands.

Absolute free speech online is often defended the way unrestricted industrial growth once was: as progress. Only later do we realise that pollution does not stay contained, and that cleanup is far more costly than prevention.

Broad free speech protections, particularly online where algorithms fuel outrage and users can say anything anonymously, have real costs. Truth becomes optional, trust in institutions collapses, and social cohesion erodes. These are not slippery-slope predictions; they are real consequences of digital deregulation occurring across the globe.

When everything can be said without consequence, the people who pay the price are not those with platforms, but those without them. In no area is this more dangerous than climate policy, where manufactured doubt does not merely misinform but postpones action until meaningful prevention becomes impossible.

Malaysia’s progress in sustainability, social cohesion and long-term planning rests on the recognition that markets and systems require robust stewardship. The digital sphere should not be the sole exception. Messaging and social media platforms must be held accountable.

The choice is not between freedom and control. It is between thoughtful governance and passive neglect. The US chose the latter and is now struggling to rebuild trust, truth and civic stability. Malaysia should not repeat that experiment under the illusion that deregulation is neutrality.

HK

 

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