SOCIAL media platforms will soon be licensed. If all traditional media outfits operating in the country are licensed why should new media outfits be any different?
There is, of course, a well-worn rationale as to why media operating within the country are licensed: it is a question of accountability.
Sure, human rights organisations grumble that the media are accountable to readers and users like you and me.
If governments are accountable to us, the voters, the same reasoning surely applies to the media: whether they thrive or fold depends on us, the users and consumers of media. But therein lies the rub.
Political parties and individuals are answerable to various laws which constrain their speech and keep them, by and large, responsible and accountable.
All media, it may be argued, are similarly subject to the same laws of the land.
Except that, it appears till now, some media are more equal than others. Social media outfits are readily accessible in the country but, for accountability purposes, they are as good as non-entities within the country.
Malaysia is no superpower which can lay claim to extra-territorial rights in the countries where social-media giants call home and have legal personas.
Which must be why Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil expressed frustration that dialogues with social-media outfits achieved nothing.
Should governments — especially Malaysia's — be concerned about any adverse impact social media can cause? I think they should.
The rise of populist politicians worldwide arguably owes much to how they deploy social media to their advantage.
The proliferation of fake news, misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories is exponentially magnified by individuals sharing them on mobile devices in real time.
If fire has been traditionally regarded as a useful servant but a terrible master, the equally real infernos that social-media viral messaging can potentially ignite is not to be scoffed at.
More so in a country like ours with a combustible social make-up whose vulnerabilities can never be taken for granted.
There is a narrative being put across that the current unity government disappoints in delivering the reforms that it had promised while on the hustings.
Perhaps those were promises bandied about by political veterans but mostly governing neophytes for whom the actual business of government has had a rather bracing effect.
The succession of Barisan Nasional-led governments we used to have never lived down charges that they were either dictatorial or had dictatorial tendencies.
So instead of harbouring "disappointments" now about our current government, perhaps a maturing electorate like ours needs to be a bit more discerning in its expectations of governments, any government.
Time and again, we are reminded by those in power not to take our political stability for granted.
Without the requisite stability, our laudable economic strides may not have been possible.
But how is that stability attained and sustained in the first place?
My sense is that social cohesion is paramount.
And if, as we are witnessing today, social and political cohesion in rich and supposedly advanced countries being torn asunder by — I suspect — social media running rampant, how much more vulnerable a country and society like ours may be to such depredation?
I say give the government the benefit of the doubt as it wrestles with how best to hold social media accountable.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching