Social Media Lead-Time to Remove Scam Posts: Minister Calls for Improvement

In a speech at the 2023 Singapore Police Force (SPF) Workplan Seminar, Minister Shanmugam said that the SPF had received more than 13,000 reports of scams in the first half of 2023, a 30% increase over the same period in 2022.

He said that social media platforms had played a role in facilitating some of these scams and that they needed to do more to remove scam posts from their platforms.

Minister Shanmugam noted that some social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, had improved their turnaround time for removing scam posts. However, he said that Telegram, in particular, had been slow to respond to reports of scam posts.

He urged Telegram to do more to protect its users from scams.

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