Photo via The Malaysian Reserve
Malaysians have had a lot of information to process over the past couple days, with the return of the Movement Control Order (MCO) and a state of emergency, all announced within 24 hours!
But we were unexpectedly treated to some humour to end the day yesterday (January 12th), when some old tweets from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) official Twitter account resurfaced.
The thing is, many of the tweets were pretty vulgar and childish, like as though a teenager had tweeted them, which left Malaysians hysterical yet confused.
After the tweets went viral, MCMC issued a statement saying its account was hacked and it did not tweet any of those messages, which didn’t make sense as the tweets dated back to 2014!
So here’s the story behind MCMC’s purported obscene tweets…
It seems that MCMC had actually taken over an existing account with existing followers from one, Nazrul Hakim, the original owner of the account @Nazrulllhakim.
The 22-year-old told the Malay Mail he had sold the account to another person, unbeknownst to the fact that this person probably sold it to MCMC, and of course, he wouldn’t have bothered to delete his old tweets.
“The account had around 50,000 followers at that time. So somebody offered to buy that account from me. I was then just 15 or 16 years old. As a schoolkid, of course, I wanted to feel what it’s like to have money,” he said.
It’s understood that Nazrul had sold his account to another Twitter user for RM1,300, but this purchase couldn’t be verified as Nazrul did not have any record of the transaction.
Many of the tweets, which were actually by Nazrul with his views on life at the time, were retweeted by netizens last night.
“I was just a kid, so surely there would be some nonsense, disgusting posts. But I now regret saying those things,” he said.
Account trading, which violates Twitter’s terms and conditions, is used when a person or entity wishes to acquire an account that has already amassed a huge number of followers, rather than growing it naturally over time.
And as MCMC tried to cover its tracks before its account subsequently went dark, it had nearly 70,000 followers.
Netizens and several public figures have been calling the government body out as being hypocritical, having only earlier issued a warning against offensive posts on race, religion and royalty, just before the 2014 tweets resurfaced.
MCMC maintains it was hacked and has yet to reveal the real story behind its “official” account.
So guys, if you’re planning to get on another social media platform, perhaps it’s best if you build from the ground up and start a new account, yeah?
by Kyle Roshen Jacob
