Harris Zainul was quoted by New Straits Times on 8 February 2026
by Zaf Seraj
KUALA LUMPUR: Online hate speech and false information on Dewan Rakyat live streams could threaten national harmony and cause harm to vulnerable communities, experts said.
They said harmful allegations and false narratives might cause people to believe in its “truth”, or use such narratives to fuel hatred against others.
Many of these comments, with deliberate and incorrect spelling, allow the postings to slip through, a common tactic used by social media users worldwide to circumvent algorithms that flag harmful content to reach the correct audience.
Media self-regulatory body Communications and Multimedia Content Forum chief executive officer Mediha Mahmood said the nature of the comments highlighted by the New Straits Times should not be normal-ised.
“Netizens lump migrants, immigrants, undocumented persons and refugees under one label, ‘Pati’ (pendatang asing tanpa izin), meaning migrants without legal documents.
“They generalise about the group while promoting hate or fear against such communities and imposing criminality on them. You stereotype the Rohingya as thieves or whatever.
“This is bad because you’re stereotyping an entire community,” Mediha said.
She said the harmful allegations lead to real-life consequences for the already-vulnerable community.
“Some TikTok users prompt people to hunt these communities down.”
“It’s strong enough to get people to either hate it or support it, thereby dominating the discussion, which leads to either converting people to the same ideas or converting them to hate.”
She touched on the deliberate use of incorrect spelling to outsmart the algorithm that flags harmful content.
“For example, instead of saying ‘rape’, they say ‘grape’.
“Or if they don’t want to escape the algorithm, but they want to escape people searching for those words, they misspell it,” Mediha said.
Monash University Malaysia’s communications and new media academic Dr Benjamin Y.H.
Loh described the incoherence of some comments and deliberate misspellings as extreme “whata-boutism.”
He said dropping a few pieces of information and keywords together without actually saying anything coherent was intended to trick people into forming a conclusion on their own.
Readers would either think the statement made was nonsensical and move on, or become fooled due to preconceived notions on the issue or a lack of literacy, he said.
Loh said these acts of manipulating public perception were dangerous as they created a false impression of reality.
“This will feed into their perceptions, world views and then reinforce it in many different ways.
“Where you’re seeing thousands of (social media) accounts doing all these kinds of activities, this is where it gets dangerous because it’s not in the spirit of democracy anymore.
“You’re trying to create a fake impression of what people are presenting or what public opinion is looking like.
“That’s the main goal behind this.
“You’re trying to manipulate public opinion,” he added.
Meanwhile, Research at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia director Harris Zainul said using sockpuppet accounts or automated accounts known as “bots” was common in the region.
They are also used in Indonesia and the Philippines to give the impression that the narratives being spread were organic.
“This is a part of mainstream political messaging strategies where digital labour is employed to create and support selected narratives,” Harris said.
Harris said potentially inauthentic activities looked and felt the same as genuine interaction.
This article first appeared in New Straits Times on 8 February 2026
