Nothing’s off limits – it’s open season on the Internet!

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WHEN I was 13 years old, I would have to wait patiently for my grandfather to finish reading his daily copy of The Straits Times, which had just arrived by air from Kuala Lumpur at around 1pm. By the time I got my hands on it, it was usually 3pm, so I’d spent about two hours reading it from front to back (skipping only the classifieds and the sports pages).

I have been a news addict since I was a teenager and I haven’t weaned myself off that addiction for 55 years. I probably never will.

In those days, in the early 1960s, the news items I read were usually at least three to four days old if they were datelined anywhere but Singapore or Kuala Lumpur; and at least two days old if they’re from across the pond. The local news in The Sarawak Tribune and The Vanguard were at least a day old. (There was no The Borneo Post then.) Other than newspapers, all we had was the radio — television didn’t appear till the late 1960s.

Then along came the Internet and it changed all that.

The world wide web, the smartphone, social media, applications (apps) like WhatsApp and many countless others too many to name, have changed everything.

Today, we get all our news, reports, images, video clips and live podcasts instantly — just a click away on our handheld device or a PC, laptop or what have you. Direct, unfiltered, uncensored and, unfortunately, sometimes unverified or even fake.

It’s now open season for the content creator and it’s free to view or read for the target audience — nothing gets in the way of this direct to you, in your face, one to one, and even if you’re not looking for it, it’s all there, just waiting.

There is no escape, only your choice to switch it off. You can block it, mute it, or uninstall it — but it’s all still there, right there waiting for you if and when you change your mind.

In this day and age with this technology, no one escapes prowling eyes, curious ears, and the nosey parkers out there.

Let’s just look at a recent example.

A few days ago, the chat groups on social media and on WhatsApp suddenly exploded with photographs of our King, the Agong, which appeared to look like he was at a ceremony with a former Miss Moscow. Within hours, this had gone viral, the online portals were even saying that he had taken on a new wife. The next day, when asked at a press op, the Prime Minister had to respond by saying that he had not been “officially informed”.

Just a few years back, an event like this would have gone unnoticed and unreported if the persons involved had wanted to have his privacy protected; until maybe such time as appropriate for him to make it public. Who knows when? He could choose his own timing.

This is no longer the case today. Nothing escapes the media, nothing escapes the inquisitive camera lens on the smartphone, nothing goes unshared on WhatsApp or Facebook.

Someone told me many years ago that in the hi-tech world of our modern day social media that ‘content is king’. Apparently Mark Zuckerberg had the same idea, and had used it by making us all, his ‘Facebookers’, generate our very own content for him for free thus making him a multibillionaire on the way there.

It is highly unlikely that without the advent of the unholy trinity of the Internet, social media, and the smartphone that we would have seen the recent change of government in Malaysia. The overthrow of the old Barisan Nasional and Najib Razak regime by the current Pakatan Harapan government would not have come about.

Three Malaysian politicians made all the difference – Mahathir, Najib, Anwar. Without any one of them, the chain of recent historical events would not have taken place. I need not dwell on those details again here. They have been told far too many times by now.

The freedom of expression and the inability of the BN government or anyone else for that matter to censor or to hamper the Internet allowed for unfiltered and straight talking news, views, images, and video clips (sometimes unverified but mostly unedited) brought about by such well-known names such as Clare Rewcastle Brown, Rafizi Ramli, Tian Chua, Lim Kit Siang, Karpal Singh (RIP) etc.

The list on the rogues’ gallery is long, mostly filled up with Umno characters and other cronies in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, and Sarawak. I shall not list them here by name lest they get their lawyers working overtime.

Something triggered the people’s revolution against BN, Umno, Najib, and his cronies. Some people believe it was Najib’s wife and her spendthrift ways; many blamed Najib himself. But all were in unity that a change must come if Malaysia were to survive and that BN and Umno had to be ousted.

It didn’t take much to unite the forces that were Internet savvy, well-informed, better educated, and connected by a common enemy.

They became freedom fighters on the Internet highway and on social media, WhatsApp chat groups, and online independent news portals. The majority did it without any fee or payment, but out of sheer love for the country. Many in turn were persecuted, prosecuted, targeted, and blackballed. The more the authorities did that, the more sympathisers they attracted — and the support for their cause just grew from strength to strength.

To counter what these PKR, DAP, and independent forces were successfully doing, the BN/Najib cybertrooper squads had gone on to counter attack whenever, wherever, and however they met with such allegations online and on social media. But in this conflict, they were fighting a losing battle and eventually they lost the war. The BN cybertroopers were easily identified by all, even the more devious and doubled-headed spies and moles were easily rooted out. They couldn’t rid themselves of the stain of the unadulterated evil ways of their corrupt political masters.

As the dust slowly settles down these past months, we hope to see a more balanced and fairer approach by the new PH government towards all fellow Malaysians, having learned the bad lessons of the Najib regime. We are most grateful indeed for the Internet, social media, and to all those who had fought the good fight on our behalf, as we now face a new dawn for our beloved country Malaysia.