BOTH cybertroopers and their paymasters who mastermind illicit attacks via diverse social media platforms to inflict personality damage on their targets are indeed societal menaces who ought to be dealt with severely by the justice system.
To put this rambling into perspective, yours truly was selected among hundreds or perhaps thousands of online news portal editors as the “author” of a fake article which was purportedly intended to damage the reputation of Petra Group chairman and CEO Datuk Dr Vinod Sekhar.
To untrained eyes, the fake article which bears the masthead of FocusM and “crediting” yours truly as its author would seem to be an authentic FocusM product except that it did not adhere to our publication’s house style, notably having a proper headline (heading) and our adherence to British English (as opposed to American English).
To showcase the speed of how fast fake news can travel these days, it took less than three hours between the time the so-called ‘news piece’ was conveyed to the senior management of the Petra Group (fortunately only by WhatsApp means) which was around noon last Friday (March 11) till the moment it reached out ‘to the entire nation’.
Soon after being informed of the fake article being circulated by the Petra Group’s head of corporate communications, yours truly was besieged by phone calls and WhatsApp texts from newsmen counterparts and numerous other contacts on the existence of the fake article and if yours truly has a role in it.
The experience can be disconcerting, prompting the spouse of yours truly to cynically suggest that yours truly should look at the bright side – that yours truly should feel honoured to be targeted by the particular cybertrooper among hundreds if not thousands of news portal editors out there.
Perhaps, she has a valid point for cybertroopers are deemed to have properly researched their targets, including the reputation/credibility of yours truly in the media industry. Moreover, the perpetrator might have an axe to grind with both victims (yours truly and the Petra Group head honcho).
Nevertheless, yours truly was thankful for the free consultancy rendered by an ex-superior-cum-mentor who suggested lodging a report to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) so as to facilitate an investigation into the matter.
This was followed by a denial of involvement or role in the crafting and distribution of the fake article on the FocusM portal on the following day (March 12).
Modus operandi
According to a 2020 media manipulation survey by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), organised social media manipulation campaigns have been found in 81 countries – up from 70 countries in 2019 – with global misinformation being produced on an industrial scale by major governments, public relations firms and political parties.
On Malaysia’s cybertrooper activity, OII said there are evidence of “medium-capacity” capabilities with a more consistent form and strategy that involve full-time staff members who are employed year-round to control information space.
A term originating in Malaysia but has now increasingly been used worldwide, “cybertroopers” refer to a person or groups of people who are paid to disseminate political propaganda on the internet, particularly on social media platforms.
“These medium-capacity teams often coordinate with multiple actor types, and experiment with a wide variety of tools and strategies for social media manipulation,” OII director and co-author of the study Prof Philip Howard pointed out.
The OII report said Malaysia’s cybertrooper activity is mainly from human accounts and fake bot accounts. OII said fake bot accounts are highly automated accounts designed to mimic human behaviour online.
Such strategies, according to OII, are often employed by government agencies, politicians and political parties, private contractors, civil society organisations, citizens and influencers.
In its “Global Disinformation Order” report in 2020, OII said social media accounts driven by cybertroopers in Malaysia that include accounts on Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube and Twitter were used to spread pro-government or pro-party propaganda, attack the Opposition in smear campaigns and suppress participation through personal attacks or harassment.
In real-life practice, Datuk Rizal Mansor who was the former aide to Datik Seri Rosmah Mansor, wife of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, told the Kuala Lumpur High Court in September 2020 that there were about 30 to 40 cyber troopers working for Rosmah between 2012 and 2018 with an allocation of RM100,000 a month.
“They (were) paid between RM2,000 (and) RM4,000 a month and I prepared the budget (for which) RM100,000 was given every month by her,” added Rizal who was instrumental in helping to set up a cybertrooper team for Rosmah in 2012 to counter the purported allegations and slander against her. – March 18, 2022
