uncovered a network of at least 263 accounts engaging in a coordinated campaign to artificially boost support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on his official Facebook page....Experts who reviewed the findings said the patterns clearly indicate professional astroturfing – a campaign designed to create a false impression of grassroots support.
Summary
Researcher Murray Hunter is awaiting trial over alleged criticisms of MCMC.
Hunter says the Malaysian government and MCMC’s objective is to bully and intimidate people.
Political commentator and academic researcher Murray Hunter was detained for 48 hours and charged in Thailand over his criticisms of the MCMC.
Hunter, who is an Australian national, was eventually released on bail yesterday after being detained on Sept 29, and is awaiting trial on Nov 17, where he claims that the MCMC will be called as the accuser.
In a phone interview with Malaysiakini today, Hunter claimed that the Thai police had been acting on MCMC’s orders. He claimed that he had been charged with defamation over several of his blog articles, which had criticised the Malaysian authorities.
“But if my articles are not defamatory in Malaysia, how can they be considered defamatory in Thailand? The Malaysian government’s and MCMC’s objective is to bully and intimidate people, and they called on the Thai police to do their work,” he said.
“In fact, I do not think that the Thai police even understand why they’re arresting me. They only told me that I had been charged with defamation.
“They could barely pronounce the titles of my articles in English. They all barely speak English and have only repeatedly been telling me that I had been arrested for defamation,” he added.
Charged with defamation
In official court documents and police reports sighted by Malaysiakini, Hunter had been charged under Section 328 of the Thai Criminal Code with defamation, where four of his Substack articles have been quoted as defamatory material.
The documents also included links to Hunter’s Substack posts, where he had criticised the MCMC, the Malaysian police, and Umno leaders as allegedly flaunting the constitution for their own benefit and disregarding public interests.
The documents described Hunter’s blog posts as a criminal offence, which has caused the victim to suffer reputational damage, contempt, and/or hatred.
Hunter denied all charges.
“Prior to the arrest, the MCMC had been sending people to my house in Thailand for months. I have also frequently checked with the local Thai police if there had been an arrest warrant for me, but I have been told not to worry.
“But when I was at the airport two days ago, initially planning to head to Hong Kong, I was suddenly approached by the police and arrested on charges of defamation,” he explained.
Mounting defence
The official documents show that Hunter had been detained by the authorities on Sept 29 at the immigration lobby of Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport, and was then taken to Yannawa Police Station.
The documents also show that the Thai authorities had acted upon an arrest warrant against Murray, issued by the Bangkok South Criminal Court in March this year.
Nevertheless, Hunter confirmed that he has already officially begun working with his legal defence team in Thailand, and that several prominent Malaysian lawyers have also agreed to support his case.
He expressed strong hopes that the charges would eventually be dropped against him, arguing that it would be difficult for the Thai authorities to find him guilty of the “defamatory offences” which he had allegedly committed abroad.
3R probe
In March 2024, the Malaysian police initially lodged a “3R probe” against Hunter for his alleged criticism of matters concerning race, religion, and royalty.
Such cases are usually handled by a special team in Bukit Aman called the Classified Investigation Unit.
Then-inspector-general of police Razarudin Husain had also announced that the Malaysian police had requested Interpol’s assistance to locate Hunter, whom they believed was residing in Bangkok.
In April 2024, the MCMC similarly lodged a police report against Hunter for his slanderous blog posts. MCMC claimed that Hunter had openly accused the commission of acting beyond its jurisdiction for personal interests, and that the commission and the police were trying to scare the public.
Lawyers for Liberty had then criticised the move as clamping down on free speech and criticism, describing it as “unfair” for the public to receive a police complaint from a major public body, such as the MCMC.
Hunter added, “On Nov 17, it will be in the Thai court, and the MCMC will be called up to say whatever they have to say against me. I already have lawyers in Thailand, but I also have very prominent Malaysian lawyers who can act as witnesses to say that what I’ve written in Malaysia is not defamatory.”
Malaysiakini has contacted MCMC for comment and is awaiting a response. - Malaysiakini, 1/10/2025
High Court orders Telegram and Edisi Siasat, Edisi Khas to stop sharing alleged harmful content in MCMC case
By Hafiz Yatim / theedgemalaysia.com
11 Sep 2025, 02:26 pmUpdated - 04:23 pm
KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 11): The High Court on Thursday rejected the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) application to make Telegram and the Edisi Siasat and Edisi Khas channels remove alleged harmful content in a civil suit. Instead of removing the original articles, the court has ordered the defendants not to write, publish or share further articles containing the disputed content until the disposal of the suit.
Judge Mahazan Mat Taib granted this after MCMC counsel Datuk Sankara Nair asked for a mandatory injunction, but the court disagreed because it might force Telegram to censor itself and allowed a prohibitory injunction instead.
Sankara when contacted by The Edge confirmed Thursday’s outcome. He also said another MCMC case will be heard on Sept 24 by Mahazan for an inter-partes injunction.
The MCMC filed a lawsuit in May against Telegram and the two channels, claiming that since February 2024, the channels have spread hate speech targeting Malaysia’s royal institution and public bodies.
The channels were accused of sharing content that breaks the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, which could harm public trust and disrupt order.
In June, the MCMC said this was the first time such action was taken against a social media platform provider, especially since Telegram is a licensed service provider.
The MCMC said Telegram failed to remove the harmful content despite repeated reports and efforts to work with them. Because Telegram did not comply, the MCMC got a temporary court order in June to stop the harmful content from being shared again.
The MCMC said this action is to protect the law and public interest.
The MCMC's statement of claim, discovered in a file search done by The Edge, alleged that the two channels spread false and misleading information as part of a campaign involving hate speech against Malaysia’s royal family and public institutions.
The false news is said to cause public unrest, harm trust in the government, and damage social unity, especially targeting Malaysia’s royal institution.
The channels are also accused of misusing the network by sharing offensive and annoying messages.
It said as of the lawsuit date, the channels continued to spread hateful, false, and threatening content aimed at the royal institution and public officials, trying to mislead the public.
Summary
A Malaysiakini investigation finds a network of 263 Facebook accounts engaged in astroturfing to artificially boost support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
The highly coordinated campaign, which uses shared phrases and a professional work schedule, includes an account of a state-level PKR Youth official.
Following the investigation, 76 accounts - including the high-priority ones - were removed or made inaccessible, though Anwar’s office denies involvement.
(Editor’s note: This article has been updated with a response from Meta.)
A Malaysiakini investigation has uncovered a network of at least 263 accounts engaging in a coordinated campaign to artificially boost support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on his official Facebook page.
The operation includes the Facebook account of Syukur Aiman Shukri, a state-level PKR Youth official.
The discovery comes two years after Meta removed a separate, 600-account network engaged in pro-government manipulation, which it linked to the police.
While the two networks operated under different administrations, and the police have denied involvement, the findings suggest that the use of coordinated inauthentic tactics to shape political discourse in Malaysia persists.
Experts who reviewed the findings said the patterns clearly indicate professional astroturfing – a campaign designed to create a false impression of grassroots support.
“(These patterns are) a strong indication of astroturfing, where a small organised set of actors tries to create the appearance of broad grassroots support,” said Nuurrianti Jalli, an expert on online propaganda at Oklahoma State University.
Over a three-month period, comments from this 263-account network comprised nearly one-quarter of all comments sampled by Malaysiakini from the prime minister's posts.
The shared script
The network relied on a shared script of pre-written phrases. These include generic praise like “bukti kerajaan Madani…” (proof that the Madani government is…) and specific talking points such as “gaji minima RM1,700” (RM1,700 minimum wage).
This tactic was designed to create an “illusion of consensus”, according to Ross Tapsell, an expert on Southeast Asian digital media at the Australian National University.
“If voters check the comments, they usually only read the first five to 10, and those comments form their opinion,” he said.
A professional operation
The evidence of coordination goes beyond shared text. The network's most revealing pattern is its work schedule.
An analysis of over 6,000 comments showed the network's activity consistently peaks during weekday afternoons and evenings, with sharp drops on weekends.
In stark contrast, authentic users show the opposite pattern, with their highest engagement occurring during evenings and on weekends.
A compartmentalised structure complemented this professional schedule.
A network analysis revealed the operation is organised into 27 distinct clusters of accounts that frequently post within the same 10-minute windows.
This cellular structure indicates that different groups are activated in coordinated pockets, rather than acting as a single, spontaneous mob.
Unsophisticated machine
While the evidence pointed to a professional and organised campaign, experts who reviewed the findings noted that the operation itself appeared to be of low quality.
A linguistic analysis found the accounts’ vocabulary to be significantly more repetitive and less diverse than that of authentic users on the page.
Benjamin Loh, a researcher who studies Malaysian cybertroopers, described the operation as “lazy and clearly lackadaisical”.
“Cybertroopers of yore... were far more adept at varying their posts,” Loh said, comparing the current network to more sophisticated operations that existed before 2018.
The PKR connection
After the data established the existence of this machine, further investigation identified one of its operators as Syukur, the communications director for the Perlis PKR Youth wing.
When contacted by Malaysiakini, Syukur denied being a “cybertrooper” and stated that he acted independently out of genuine support for his party's president.
“I am a party man, not a cybertrooper,” he said in a text message.
“I comment on my own because I am a party person and the prime minister is the party president, so when he does good things, I comment in support.”
However, Syukur's claim that he comments "on his own" is inconsistent with the on-platform data from his account.
The investigation found that Syukur's account used the same pre-written scripts as the wider network and engaged in rapid crossposting.
On July 23, for example, his account posted six comments on five different posts in under two minutes, using the network's signature phrases.
Furthermore, the data confirmed he was not acting in isolation. His account is a member of one of the 27 coordinated clusters, frequently posting in the same 10-minute windows as other network members.
These behaviours - using shared scripts and posting at around the same time with a larger network - are inconsistent with the spontaneous, individual support he described.
Denial and disappearance
The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) denied any knowledge of or involvement with the network, stating there is “no basis or necessity” to direct the MCMC to investigate.
In a response to Malaysiakini, the office confirmed that no taxpayer funds were used and stated that “neither the government, the party leadership, nor its youth wing has issued any directive or provided any funding for such an operation.”
The PMO attributed the activity to individuals exercising their freedom of expression.
However, evidence of shared scripts, professional work schedules, and a coordinated cluster structure contradict this explanation.
Furthermore, in the days following Malaysiakini's enquiries, a significant portion of the network was dismantled.
At least 76 of the 263 identified accounts (29 percent) were removed or made inaccessible.
The removals targeted the network's most important assets: 11 of the 13 high-priority accounts flagged in a dossier sent to Meta – including that of the PKR Youth official Syukur – were among those that vanished.
It remains unclear whether Meta removed the accounts or if the operators acted pre-emptively. Both possibilities point to inauthentic, coordinated activity.
‘Consequences for democracy’
Experts warned that such operations, regardless of their scale or sophistication, pose a risk to democratic discourse.
The Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) warned such behaviour can “distort perceptions of public sentiment, drown out dissenting voices, and weaken the public's ability to engage meaningfully in debate”.
Nuurrianti echoes this view. “That has consequences for how citizens interpret online debate and for the health of democratic discourse,” she said.
In response to Malaysiakini’s queries, Meta emphasised it has policies in place to prevent coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB), but has yet to find signs of wrongdoing on Anwar’s Facebook page.
“At this time, our review has not found evidence of violations of our CIB policy related to the prime minister’s Facebook page,” a spokesperson said.
This is despite the dossier detailing specific instances where CIB accounts have engaged in rapid crossposting and commenting from a shared script, as well as examples where the accounts have misrepresented their identity to lend authority to their comments.
Part 2: Deception and data: Inside the investigation of pro-Anwar CIB network
Part 3: Experts: Systemic challenges enable persistent influence networks
Analysis by Koh Jun Lin. Additional reporting by B Nantha Kumar and Qistina Nadia Dzulqarnain. - Malaysiakini, 30/9/2025
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