Last week, Rosmah Mansor woke up early in Lima, Peru for the CEO Summit 2016.
According to her, even her husband, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak, was puzzled by her excitement so early in the morning.
“I told him (Najib) that I want to ask Zuckerberg if there is any mechanism for him to detect false Facebook accounts,” Rosmah said about her morning conversation with Najib.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook was to give the keynote speech for the CEO Summit this year, urging world leaders to bring more people online in order to reduce the economic gap between half of the population who had internet to the other half who didn’t.
With only an antique Samsung phone, it had taken Rosmah too long to discover the fake accounts created under her name, but she was still appalled nonetheless.
Alas, Rosmah’s wish didn’t come true that day. Despite Rosmah’s efforts, Zuckerberg was a busy man.
“I waited, but there was not question-and-answer session as he (Zuckerberg) had to rush to another place. I really wanted to ask him because Facebook also has its flaws,” she said.
Rosmah spoke again at the Annual Gathering of National Sayang Squad in conjunction with the UMNO General Assembly 2016 at the Putra World Trade Centre here yesterday, addressing the issue.
She stressed that she never had any kind of social media accounts, not even Facebook or Twitter. As long as she can make & accept calls and reply to SMSes then the phone is good enough, so she explained she only uses an “antique Samsung”.
As such, she said the public should not fall for any social media accounts bearing or using her name.
She said that she had seen at least 20 of them on Facebook alone and the misuse of her name and image clearly struck a nerve with her. After all, these accounts were possibly putting words into her mouth that she never would have said.
“If you read it (on social media), then you’ve been duped. If there’s anything (you want to know) about me, just ask me face-to-face. Straight to the point, don’t tell lies.
Make optimal use of strategic social media channels to promote our efforts. Use social media as our cyber weapon to disseminate the correct information and to counter all the allegations and lies hurled by the oppositions,” she said, as patron of the Sayang Squad.
68 per cent of 21 million Malaysians are active users of popular social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, she said. She added that on average, Malaysians spent 5.1 hours on the Internet or 2.8 hours on their social media a day.
That is perhaps much more opportunity for netizens to be duped by these fake accounts.
After all, even a cursory search of Rosmah Mansor’s name on Twitter already revealed 6 Twitter accounts associated with Malaysia’s first lady—which is 6 too many if she never even had one in the first place.
Fortunately, most of the social media accounts associated with the good Mansor name have been inactive for years now, which means that the chances of anyone being tricked by them is low.
Here is to hoping that the Datin Seri will have better luck the next time she comes across Mark Zuckerberg to make her point.
Feature Image Credit: Bernama
