Hello, people!

Recently, there's been a lot of a push to say that Malaysia is a place where speech is being suppressed and you can't express your opinion, but I want to know how you genuinely feel about it.

Do you feel that you have freedom of speech in Malaysia?

Please vote in the poll and let me know how you feel as well!

It would be arrogant to the degree of a lie to say that I make policies, but it would be an understatement to the degree of a lie to say that I am not heard or that I have had no interaction with policymakers that has materially shaped policies.

It is also a little presumptuous for you to say that someone is only worth interacting with if they are a policymaker or to tread in the direction of saying people who ask questions about policy are only worth talking to IF they are policymakers, don’t you think?

Nice for you to exercise your freedom of speech.

Now consider reflecting on why you’ve chosen to make the comment that you did ya.

Yeah, definitely not. I hope that discussion will become more nuanced though! I'm going to share a piece about this pretty soon, and I hope it'll be a good contribution into the national conversation. I don't think we'll start discussing the 3R's by any means, but I think it's definitely worthwhile for people to know about what they are and why people consider them sensitive to talk about!

Yes, absolutely - I've heard people say different things ranging from "freedom of speech doesn't exist" to "there is freedom of speech", but the best way I can think about it is from a probability standpoint.

I would say you have freedom of speech in a country where the likelihood of you being caught for something that you say that does not amount to incitement or harm is very low. In Malaysia, I think that we definitely have 3R restrictions for sure. Even nowadays, when you bring in private platforms, the question of freedom of speech has been muddied. In the US, freedom of speech legislation applies primarily to criticisms of the government, which the US protects very strongly. On the other hand, when it comes to speech within private platforms and also within companies, there is no such protection.

In the US, where First Amendment protections exist, it is interesting to think about the police officer case that you mentioned earlier. In the US, swearing against a police officer is often thought of as something that the police should be able to tolerate because they are in a unique capacity and force of the law and therefore must be subject to a higher degree of tolerance. But the reality is that they can bring you in for disorderly conduct, interfering with police duties, and otherwise. Whether that negates your freedom of speech or not depends on how you define freedom of speech in the first place. If freedom of speech was only ever your ability to say something, then I would say that all jurisdictions around the world already had freedom of speech.

I find it interesting how you concluded that I was in the ‘corridors of power’ or that you somehow connected it to ‘elitism’ when there wasn’t any suggestion of that in my writing, or that the person I responded to was one of the ‘regular people’, whatever that means.

You sound like you are woke and just unhappy + looking for an argument lol.

Do you think someone intentionally deleted it?