SINGAPORE - The States Times Review Facebook page will be a Declared Online Location (DOL) under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) starting Sunday (Feb 16) - the first time such an action has been meted out under POFMA. 

This means that The States Times Review Facebook page must carry a notice stating that it has been declared a DOL, said the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) in a release on Saturday.

Through the notice, visitors to the page will be warned that the page has a history of communicating falsehoods.

The declaration will also make it an offence for its owner Mr Alex Tan to receive any benefits from operating the Facebook page and prohibit "the provision of financial support to it for the purposes of supporting, helping or promoting the communication of falsehoods".

The action taken against The States Times Review comes a day after Health Minister Gan Kim Yong ordered that the page be served a correction direction for a post containing claims about the Covid-19 situation that were "entirely untrue". 

Declared Online Locations can include website and webpages and are defined as online locations that have carried three or more different online falsehoods that are the subject of active directions issued by POFMA Office.

The latest correction direction is the third to be issued to The States Times Review Facebook page since November last year. 

In November, a correction direction was given to the  Facebook page after it put up a post that claimed that one person had been arrested and another was being investigated by the police for revealing the religious affiliation of People's Action Party member Rachel Ong in a Nov 17 post on the Nussu-NUS Students United (NSU) Facebook page. The NSU page parodies the National University of Singapore Students' Union (Nussu). 

The Ministry of Home Affairs refuted such claims. 

"The STR Facebook page has not complied with any of the POFMA directions that it has been served with," said MCI in its latest statement. 

Besides "spreading falsehoods"on the COVID-19 situation in Singapore, the page is also linked to other websites operated by Mr Tan that "derive monetary benefits from these falsehoods at the expense of Singaporeans and our society", MCI added.