Hacker News Reader

Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

this makes me feel uneasy.

> "The law also imposes penalties on those found to be purveying fake news through the use of false online accounts. Individuals can be fined up to 100,000 Singapore dollars ($73,000), jailed for up to 10 years, or both, while companies can be slapped with fines of up to SG$1 million."

SG is a small country which can easily be policed, so this probably works for them. I wonder how they deal with meme and parody accounts. (will making fun of people this way now be criminalized?)

View on HN

Simple, don't use fake accounts? Or if you are a company, don't astroturf.

As for Parody, looks like you are fine. https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/singapore-fake...

> I wonder how they deal with meme and parody accounts. (will making fun of people this way now be criminalized?)

The Singapore Law Minister has come out and said that parody and satire don't fall under the "fake news" law [1].

Note, however, that this particular law was rushed through parliament despite much criticism. Ministers are empowered to issue correction orders (which must be complied with immediately), and affected parties (which may include parody and satire) are required to spend time and money to go through the court system to dispute the order.

[1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/fake-news-law...

Easy, parody and satire doesn't pretend to be the truth?

It can be very difficult to tell the difference between 'truth' and parody online - (AKA Poe's Law)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

e.g. I do find myself wondering in some discussions on HN whether people honestly believe what seem to be rather extreme views or are simply parodying those views.

If there is a difficulty to tell the difference between the truth and the parody, then the parody should tone it down.

What about something like:

"Angus man who tried to fly drone into Perth Prison claimed Romanian circus stole his chihuahua"

Without using Google - truth or parody?

In absence of punishment for fake news, I'd assume it's parody. The presence of such punishment would let you think, "they didn't label it as parody so either they have lots of money to burn on fines, or it might actually be true".

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/perth-kinross/100...

Also a creative writing challenge based on combining this with some other headlines:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/10/creativ...

In this case it turns out to be true. But (absent fake news punishment) in general, you can assume that such a funny-sounding headline is completely bullshit, because legitimate news only hits such headlines by accident, whereas there are tabloid and celebrity gossip sites that produce such headlines on a daily basis.

In some (if not most) cases it would have my preference the truth would tone it down. ;)

What about parody that a reasonable person would recognise as such, but a small number of fools might not? For example [1] or [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWfKdKWJEkM

Both videos could be clipped differently, to reveal the fact that we're dealing with parody by e.g. stating so in the opening and closing seconds. It wouldn't ruin the joke. In fact, the only reason not to include clear markings is when you're hoping people will get confused about it.

Of course one could add a disclaimer identifying them as parody - but that response dodges the question of whether those videos should be illegal in the absence of such a disclaimer

It's less difficult when jokes are labeled as such. So I guess satire in Singapore will be fine, but will have to be unambiguous about what it is. It sounds similar to how in civilized places you're supposed to make it clear to the viewers that an ad is an ad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com