SINGAPORE: In late October, close to 400 posts across multiple social media platforms spread false theories about Singapore’s hand in Indonesia’s affairs. From late 2025 to mid-2026, about 500 TikTok clips fabricated claims of China holding the key to Singapore’s fortunes.
And at the start of the year, it was reported that nearly 300 YouTube videos were found attacking Singapore and its Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, with made-up tales of political and economic turmoil.
These are examples of how Singapore has been targeted in recent cases investigated by CNA Verify. All were judged to be disinformation, not misinformation.
Both forms involve false or misleading content. The difference is intent: Misinformation is shared without meaning to deceive, while disinformation is created and spread on purpose, to try and cause harm.
CNA Games
Show More Show Less
In the Indonesian case, experts said “buzzers” may have been involved.
These are people paid to go on social media to push messages, drown out other views, and repost and comment en masse to make a narrative look more popular than it is. The practice dates back to at least 2012.
The name “comes out of the idea that … they’re making noise online”, Indonesia researcher Ross Tapsell from the Australian National University told The Guardian in August. “In the way that lots of small insects put together make a really big ambient noise.”
Observers have warned that these tightly organised, mostly anonymous and mostly freelancing buzzers have the effect of stoking anger and deepening divisions in society.
They go by other names elsewhere – “trolls” in the Philippines , “cybertroopers” in Malaysia – but the job is the same: Push a political agenda and sway public opinion.
Malaysian journalists have linked cybertroopers to a surge in disinformation and hate speech against non-Malay groups like the Rohingya in the middle of this year.
A report in May also described a well-organised industry where cybertroopers earn up to RM10,000 (US$2,470) a month.
In September last year, news website Malaysiakini found more than 260 cybertroopers artificially inflating support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on his Facebook page. One account was identified by Malaysiakini as belonging to an official from Mr Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat.
Not all of this online noise is generated by people. Some of it comes from bots – accounts run by computer programmes, and which behave in ways not humanly possible.
Experts said bots could also explain the millions of views racked up by videos in CNA Verify’s investigations.
Who is ultimately behind the campaigns is another matter: In some cases, the evidence suggested that the accounts shared an operator or group of operators. But their identity could not be established, along with whether they were working for a business or a government.
What CNA Verify could establish, in several investigations, were signs of coordinated inauthentic behaviour or “CIB”. This refers to online entities like accounts or pages working together towards a shared goal – such as the spreading of disinformation – while misleading people about who they are or what they’re doing.
Spotting CIB requires multiple layers of evidence coming together; no single clue is proof on its own.
Telltale signs include:
Such behaviour breaks the rules of most social media platforms, and the accounts involved can be taken down.
Those that survive tend to lie low between news flashpoints, going quiet or putting up harmless posts such as memes or lifestyle content, said Associate Professor Saifuddin Ahmed from Nanyang Technological University (NTU)’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
“They do this to build followers and look authentic. When the next issue becomes salient in the public or the media, they reactivate and adapt to the developing story,” he added.
“Some of these accounts have also been seen renaming or rebranding. This matters because the effect builds up, and repeated exposure to these narratives creates risk.”
The Jack Ma investigation also revealed channels which did not push disinformation from the get-go, but instead began by flattering Singapore, before slipping in false claims – a “bait-and-switch” tactic as described by Mr Nicholas Fang, founder of Black Dot Research, a market research firm which also runs a fact-checking service.
Another ploy, he said, is to embed disinformation within what looks like harmless personal opinion or commentary.
“By adopting such tactics to create greater doubt and confusion, bad actors can avoid being spotted too early on by a more savvy or informed audience, and allow their campaigns to be more successful,” he added.
In the Indonesian case, false claims about a meeting with Singapore’s ambassador made up about 2 per cent of posts by a network of TikTok accounts. The rest of the time, the accounts posted about Indonesian domestic programmes and politics instead.
This fits the view of experts, who believe the campaigns were meant to both silence critics and rally supporters at home.
In CNA Verify’s other investigations, it was harder to say whom the posts were meant for, though educated guesses were possible.
Campaigns conducted in Mandarin, for instance, may have been aimed at Chinese speakers in Singapore or abroad. Where such content attacked Singapore, the objective may have been to cause domestic uncertainty or shake confidence in how the country is run.
Whether and how many real people actually believed the false claims, or changed their views because of them, remains unclear.
Indonesian news outlet Tempo examined what is believed to be the first post spreading the false meeting claim, and found that most comments under it were sceptical.
But empirical evidence shows that some people do get affected, said Assoc Prof Saifuddin. He pointed to a recent study showing that some respondents in both Singapore and Indonesia had fallen for haze-related deepfakes.
“When disinformation is repeated on social media, it makes false claims appear more familiar and credible over time,” said the political communication researcher. “If you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes true for some audiences.”
The worry, he added, is not of entire populations being swayed, but that some vulnerable groups will be – and that trust will slowly be eroded.
As to why Singapore is being targeted, start with the big picture: Disinformation campaigns are becoming more common as countries look for an edge over rivals, noted Mr Fang, who also chairs an expert panel on strategic communications for Singapore’s defence ministry.
Such campaigns are effective, efficient, cheap, and can be run relatively anonymously and with plausible deniability, he said. That makes them a handy tool for those with the aim of “destabilising societies” and leaving policymakers “bogged down and unable to focus on critical issues”.
Singapore, specifically, is a “ripe target” because it is multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-religious, open, highly connected, and important on the global stage, he added.
“Being able to influence or impact Singapore … may be attractive to those whose interests run counter or are in competition with ours.”
As disinformation campaigns become more sophisticated and harder to spot and trace, Singaporeans’ best defence might be to better understand how such threats work and what they hope to achieve, said Mr Fang.
This can be supported by more public outreach and education. Building resilience across society in this way may be more effective, he said, rather than trying to figure out the source of disinformation in each and every case.
Continue reading...
And at the start of the year, it was reported that nearly 300 YouTube videos were found attacking Singapore and its Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, with made-up tales of political and economic turmoil.
These are examples of how Singapore has been targeted in recent cases investigated by CNA Verify. All were judged to be disinformation, not misinformation.
Both forms involve false or misleading content. The difference is intent: Misinformation is shared without meaning to deceive, while disinformation is created and spread on purpose, to try and cause harm.
CNA Games
Show More Show Less
Related:
Who’s behind these posts?
In the Indonesian case, experts said “buzzers” may have been involved.
These are people paid to go on social media to push messages, drown out other views, and repost and comment en masse to make a narrative look more popular than it is. The practice dates back to at least 2012.
The name “comes out of the idea that … they’re making noise online”, Indonesia researcher Ross Tapsell from the Australian National University told The Guardian in August. “In the way that lots of small insects put together make a really big ambient noise.”
Observers have warned that these tightly organised, mostly anonymous and mostly freelancing buzzers have the effect of stoking anger and deepening divisions in society.
They go by other names elsewhere – “trolls” in the Philippines , “cybertroopers” in Malaysia – but the job is the same: Push a political agenda and sway public opinion.
Malaysian journalists have linked cybertroopers to a surge in disinformation and hate speech against non-Malay groups like the Rohingya in the middle of this year.
A report in May also described a well-organised industry where cybertroopers earn up to RM10,000 (US$2,470) a month.
In September last year, news website Malaysiakini found more than 260 cybertroopers artificially inflating support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on his Facebook page. One account was identified by Malaysiakini as belonging to an official from Mr Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat.
Not all of this online noise is generated by people. Some of it comes from bots – accounts run by computer programmes, and which behave in ways not humanly possible.
Experts said bots could also explain the millions of views racked up by videos in CNA Verify’s investigations.
Who is ultimately behind the campaigns is another matter: In some cases, the evidence suggested that the accounts shared an operator or group of operators. But their identity could not be established, along with whether they were working for a business or a government.
How do the accounts typically behave?
What CNA Verify could establish, in several investigations, were signs of coordinated inauthentic behaviour or “CIB”. This refers to online entities like accounts or pages working together towards a shared goal – such as the spreading of disinformation – while misleading people about who they are or what they’re doing.
Spotting CIB requires multiple layers of evidence coming together; no single clue is proof on its own.
Telltale signs include:
- Accounts created almost simultaneously, sometimes seconds or minutes apart. In April, CNA Verify found that five fake websites blocked by Singapore authorities had been registered within 24 seconds of one another.
- Posts or comments that go up seconds or minutes apart, or at regular intervals. YouTube channels using AI-generated likenesses of Alibaba founder Jack Ma uploaded videos one second apart; in the February anti-Singapore YouTube campaign, some videos were posted at the exact same second.
- Different accounts posting the same words or visuals. Videos in the February YouTube campaign shared the same script, voice-over or thumbnail.
- The same accounts repeatedly replying to and boosting one another.
Such behaviour breaks the rules of most social media platforms, and the accounts involved can be taken down.
Those that survive tend to lie low between news flashpoints, going quiet or putting up harmless posts such as memes or lifestyle content, said Associate Professor Saifuddin Ahmed from Nanyang Technological University (NTU)’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
“They do this to build followers and look authentic. When the next issue becomes salient in the public or the media, they reactivate and adapt to the developing story,” he added.
“Some of these accounts have also been seen renaming or rebranding. This matters because the effect builds up, and repeated exposure to these narratives creates risk.”
The Jack Ma investigation also revealed channels which did not push disinformation from the get-go, but instead began by flattering Singapore, before slipping in false claims – a “bait-and-switch” tactic as described by Mr Nicholas Fang, founder of Black Dot Research, a market research firm which also runs a fact-checking service.
Another ploy, he said, is to embed disinformation within what looks like harmless personal opinion or commentary.
“By adopting such tactics to create greater doubt and confusion, bad actors can avoid being spotted too early on by a more savvy or informed audience, and allow their campaigns to be more successful,” he added.
Who are the posts for?
In the Indonesian case, false claims about a meeting with Singapore’s ambassador made up about 2 per cent of posts by a network of TikTok accounts. The rest of the time, the accounts posted about Indonesian domestic programmes and politics instead.
This fits the view of experts, who believe the campaigns were meant to both silence critics and rally supporters at home.
In CNA Verify’s other investigations, it was harder to say whom the posts were meant for, though educated guesses were possible.
Campaigns conducted in Mandarin, for instance, may have been aimed at Chinese speakers in Singapore or abroad. Where such content attacked Singapore, the objective may have been to cause domestic uncertainty or shake confidence in how the country is run.
Whether and how many real people actually believed the false claims, or changed their views because of them, remains unclear.
Indonesian news outlet Tempo examined what is believed to be the first post spreading the false meeting claim, and found that most comments under it were sceptical.
But empirical evidence shows that some people do get affected, said Assoc Prof Saifuddin. He pointed to a recent study showing that some respondents in both Singapore and Indonesia had fallen for haze-related deepfakes.
“When disinformation is repeated on social media, it makes false claims appear more familiar and credible over time,” said the political communication researcher. “If you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes true for some audiences.”
The worry, he added, is not of entire populations being swayed, but that some vulnerable groups will be – and that trust will slowly be eroded.
Related:
How can Singapore defend itself?
As to why Singapore is being targeted, start with the big picture: Disinformation campaigns are becoming more common as countries look for an edge over rivals, noted Mr Fang, who also chairs an expert panel on strategic communications for Singapore’s defence ministry.
Such campaigns are effective, efficient, cheap, and can be run relatively anonymously and with plausible deniability, he said. That makes them a handy tool for those with the aim of “destabilising societies” and leaving policymakers “bogged down and unable to focus on critical issues”.
Singapore, specifically, is a “ripe target” because it is multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-religious, open, highly connected, and important on the global stage, he added.
“Being able to influence or impact Singapore … may be attractive to those whose interests run counter or are in competition with ours.”
As disinformation campaigns become more sophisticated and harder to spot and trace, Singaporeans’ best defence might be to better understand how such threats work and what they hope to achieve, said Mr Fang.
This can be supported by more public outreach and education. Building resilience across society in this way may be more effective, he said, rather than trying to figure out the source of disinformation in each and every case.
Continue reading...