What is POFMA?
POFMA is the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act. It is also commonly known as Singapore’s anti fake news legislation. The law came into effect on 2 October 2019.
More overviews of the POFMA legislation can be found here:
- POFMA in the Singapore Statutes
- Singapore Legal Advice’s Guide to POFMA
- Academia.sg’s overview of POFMA’s news coverage and their statements on POFMA
What is POFMA’ed?
POFMA’ed is a dataset which aims to record every instance of the use of this legislation, for reference by academics, media practitioners and the general public. The data will be updated continually.
This dataset was last updated on 8 October 2020. As of the time of writing (11 February 2021), there have been no publicly reported uses of POFMA since July 2020.
Contact
This dataset is maintained by Teo Kai Xiang. If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions, please direct them to POFMAed@gmail.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Mentions
- Academia.sg
- New Naratif (POFMA: Singapore’s Clumsy “Fake News” Hammer)
- Our Class Notes (Pofma — but not for WhatsApp so far)
- The Diplomat (Singapore’s First Election Under the Fake News Law)
- ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (In Singapore, an Already Unfair Vote Undermined by COVID-19)
- Singapore Votes (Singapore Votes Resource List)
- La Trobe University (Fighting Fake News Industry Report)