Saifuddin Abdullah orders thorough investigation into MCMC’s Twitter fiasco

Netizens had quite a laugh yesterday evening when old tweets posted on MCMC’s verified official twitter account @SKMM_MCMC went viral for the wrong reasons. After the lewd tweets from 2014 were widely shared online, the MCMC had quickly suspended their Twitter account. Shortly after that, they issued a statement claiming that their Twitter account was hacked by irresponsible parties.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Dato Saifuddin Abdullah didn’t find the situation amusing. He has issued a statement saying that he is viewing the matter seriously.

The Minister has ordered the Secretary-General of the Communications and Multimedia Ministry to conduct a thorough investigation from all angles including the management of the Twitter account. He said if there are any elements of wrongdoing, stern action will be taken against those who are responsible regardless if they are no longer serving at the MCMC. Saifuddin said he will not compromise and he will act transparently in handling the issue.

As discovered yesterday, it appears that the MCMC’s current Twitter account was transferred from a personal individual around 2015. A user who currently tweets from @NazruiHakim had claimed to be the owner of the original account which had 50,000 followers. He sold it to an individual when he was in secondary school without any knowledge that it would ended up being the official Twitter account for a government agency. In an interview, he told MalayMail that he sold it for RM1,300.

Based on archives saved on WayBack Machine, the @SKMM_MCMC Twitter account was created in August 2013 with a total of 687 tweets and 2,513 followers on the 19th of October 2015. On 31st of October 2015, the same @SKMM_MCMC handle suddenly has over 36,000 tweets with 48,500 followers. On top of that, the account creation date was showing July 2013, which is a month earlier than the original account.

[ SOURCE , IMAGE SOURCE ]

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