The official Twitter account for the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) was deactivated earlier this evening in what seems to be a rather extraordinary chain of events. It all began when the regulatory body released a statement regarding social media ethics in relation to the upcoming implementation of MCO 2.0 and emergency order.
Not long after, old tweets dated from as far as 2014 belonging to the MCMC’s account had made their way online. Many of these tweets such as those captured by Twitter user @azmirliberty were rather coarse in nature and clearly contradicts what the agency had announced earlier today.
This you? https://t.co/K7hJeybT4d pic.twitter.com/GleLiNP6z7
— Azmir (@azmirliberty) January 12, 2021
Hence, some netizens have begun to suspect that MCMC didn’t create the Twitter account from scratch and may have been purchased from other users. A 22-year-old man from Pahang, Nazrul Hakim has since claimed that the account originally belonged to him under the user name @Nazrulllhakim.
According to Malay Mail’s interview with Nazrul, he sold the account which was around 50000 when he was about 15 or 16 years old to another Twitter user for RM 1300. The buyer is apparently a staff member at MCMC although it is not known whether the person is still working at the commission or otherwise.
Account and username trading is actually a violation of Twitter’s terms and conditions. That being said, MCMC did release a statement saying that its official Twitter account has been breached and those tweets did not come from the commission. But by then, the incident had gained traction online which subsequently propelled MCMC and SKMM’s name into the top 3 trending topic list on Twitter for Malaysia.
