Tony Fernandes quits Facebook

Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, the Group Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia has quit Facebook. He made his announcement via Twitter and it looks like he has had enough of negativity on social media.

According to his tweet, he has 670,000 followers on his Facebook account and he is thinking about whether to remain on Twitter. Tony had once deactivated his Twitter account back in 2014.

The founder of the world’s best low-cost airline for 10-years in a row had also mentioned that the amount of hate that goes on in social media sometimes outweighs the good, but he thinks the battle for him goes on in Twitter.

Social media is a platform that you can use connect with family and friends, as well as to share great ideas. Unfortunately, it can be easily abused to spread negativity by irresponsible users. Recently, the Communications and Multimedia Minister, Gobind Singh, that reminded that freedom of expression is not meant to promote lewd, vulgar or sexist comments. He had called upon local online news portals and websites to self-regulate and moderate their comments section.

The Minister had also shown support for the Yang di-Pertuan Agong’s call in Parliament for the responsible use of social media, with firm and swift action to those who break the law in this regard. About two weeks ago, it was reported that MCMC could be given the power to remove fake news and racist posts on social media.

UPDATE: Tony Fernandes has provided more reasons behind his decision to quit Facebook. From the looks of it, he is frustrated with the number of fake stories especially bitcoin scams that uses his name on Facebook. He also mentioned the Christchurch massacre that was streamed live for 17 minutes on Facebook.

[ IMAGE SOURCE ]

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