SEPT 1 ― If Tan Sri Dr Rais Yatim’s idea of creating our own version of Facebook becomes reality, I wonder what it would be called.
Bernama recently reported that Rais suggested empowering authorities to block Facebook temporarily when individuals who post seditious statements that threaten public order are investigated.
“Officially, I have presented the proposal to the government and the Attorney-General. It is up to them,” said the Social and Cultural Affairs Advisor to the Government as quoted by Bernama. “What has been carried out in China in creating its own Facebook, can also be done by us and we can take preventive measures faster.”
Would it be called Muka Buku instead? Maybe with 1 Malaysia at the end for good measure. Muka Buku 1 Malaysia or MB1M for short; it does have a nice ring to it.
Although I hope that doesn’t infringe on Najwa Latif’s intellectual property ― she sings a song called Cinta Muka Buku (Facebook love). But I also imagine that even if it does, she wouldn’t mind anyway. She looks patriotic, doesn’t she?
Worse comes to worst, maybe we can put a spin on our beloved country’s informal moniker “Bolehland” ― let’s ignore its mocking origins ― and find something along those lines. How does “Bolehster” or “MukaBoleh” sound?
Anyway it’s easy to scoff at Rais’ idea here. But to be fair, there are merits to the idea of having our own version of Facebook too.
Here are five reasons, in no particular order of importance, why we should give this idea a chance:
1. Ease the burden of our boys in blue
Let’s face it, our police force has a lot on its plate. Between maintaining law and order, running after the bad guys and escorting VIPs here and there, they could probably do without having to investigate seditious statements online as well.
If we have our own version of Facebook, we can just nip things in the bud and not have to spend resources on investigating, which brings us to the next reason…
2. Jobs creation for patriotic Malaysians
Remember how Rais pointed to China as an example? In China, their version of Facebook, Sina Weibo ― which is more of a Facebook-Twitter hybrid, actually ― is strictly censored. A Cornell University paper found that about 30 per cent of total deletions on the website happened within five to 30 minutes of posting, and nearly 90 per cent of all deletions happened within 24 hours. That’s pretty phenomenal and part of their mechanism involves manual human-eye monitoring.
Now imagine if all 13 million or so Malaysians currently on Facebook migrate to this new Malaysian version of the site. That’s a lot of statements to monitor. Can you imagine how many people Putrajaya needs to hire? And how many people would fight just to get paid for being on a Facebook-equivalent all day like they probably are doing anyway?
3. Stimulate the economy
With the creation of so many jobs to monitor our own version of Facebook, we can solve unemployment as well. Fresh graduate, no job? Easy, apply for work at MB1M. Less unemployment equals more people getting salaries, which turns the economy ever more vigorously.
Lest we forget, someone actually needs to develop this new Facebook version of ours. The contract to develop the 1Malaysia email project was worth RM50 million, so I imagine this new Facebook project would cost substantially more. Once this big-bucks contract is awarded and the contractor spends the money, a few ringgit would trickle down to the man on the street and everyone is happy on MB1M.
4. Malaysia boleh!
Remember that national battle cry which came out in May 1992? Since then Malaysians have conquered Mount Everest and gone into space, among other achievements. So why not have our own version of Facebook, despite the potential cost and scary levels of state surveillance that might come packaged with it?
It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a reason to have it as long as we don’t have any reason not to, right?
5. We want to be a world power, don’t we?
Bear in mind that China, now a world power, has gone and created its own social networking site. Another world power, Russia, has VKontakte, the Russian version.
Now if we consider Facebook to be America’s, do you see the trend here? Obviously Malaysia making its own version of Facebook would be a huge step towards becoming a world power.
So where do we sign up, Tan Sri? Or will we get our username and passwords automatically when we get our ICs?
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
