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Comment by voxic11 | Hacker News Reader

Has that actually happened in Singapore though? I usually read about those kinds of incidents in rural communities which are recently and rapidly becoming internet connected. Not in densely populated and highly educated city-states which have been highly connected for decades.

Also this makes it sound like Singapore is less worried about mobs and more about cultural values

> K. Shanmugam, the law minister, warned lawmakers of the dangers of unregulated speech, handing them a list of “offensive song lyrics”, which included hits by Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande.

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Densely populated cities filled with mostly educated people are perfectly capable of riots driven by ethnic tensions and dubious claims, but Singapore's last race riot was in 1969[1]. Singapore had legitimate concerns about racial tensions in the 1970s and some of its more illiberal policies were arguably practical responses to those situations, but that was a long time ago when Singaporean society was very different, and this draft policy's clauses about making it illegal to publish material that "might diminish public confidence in a state body" seems to have other priorities.

[1]There was another riot involving Indian construction workers in 2013, but that was a spontaneous [massive over]reaction to a bus driver running someone over, not something planned or stirred up beforehand. And that's every riot in Singapore since 1969...

> Has that actually happened in Singapore though?

Singapore is more worried about publications which undermine confidence in the government.

A few months ago, a website was blocked for alleging that the government ministers were threatening war against Malaysia over a border dispute: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-herald-webs...

Critics of the current bill fear that the executive (which, like in other Commonwealth nations, is formed out of the dominant party in the legislature) would use their new powers on any media which refuses to follow the government's narrative.

I suppose that mentioning Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande is just a ploy to enlist trad-con support for the bill. The real reason is that government power very much depends on controlling the official narrative while making sure that alternative ones do not gain much traction. This was so much easier to do when information was primarily distributed through centralized media, such as newspapers, radio, and television. Governments simply had much more power back then. The internet has eroded it. So, either they give up some of that excess power, or else they somehow manage to centralize the internet. The societal control that we inherited from the past is no longer compatible with decentralized distribution of information on the internet. The very fact that we are interactively discussing this topic today, instead of merely swallowing what is supposedly best for us, demonstrates the point actually quite nicely.

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