Fact checking site Sebenarnya.my developed by Malaysia’s Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) is gaining grounds since inception in May, the website has registered over 15 million hits in 7 months.

With social media and the proliferation digital communication easily accessible throughout the country, fake news and messages being distributed by digital means also increased exponentially. Aware the repercussion if these information if they are not verified, MCMC set up the Sebenarnya.my portal for the public to refer whenever they received news that bordered on truth. Mostly on Governmental related information, when such news are received the public can refer to the portal as it receives responds from all 21 ministries.

Public can go over to check on national related news, social which includes current affairs and there’s also an advice column to find if a news is true or false. With simple user interface, the page is fairly easy to navigate, click on a news you heard or read and it will read if its a fake news. Since then, the portal has added two more features, alert and explanation, presumably to preempt visitors on trending information that’s not to taken seriously.

Expect the site to get higher clicks when the election season gets closer, the last G13 saw an unprecedented flood of information about everything from a candidate to the state of the countries economy was distributed over Whatsapp, Facebook and the internet. It was reported the ruling party lost grounds due to the new ways of information being disseminated over the platforms. Even in US, Hillary Clinton accused fake news as killing her opportunity to become the President of the capital.

Fake news and misinformation is deadly and verifying them can be arduous task, the best way to approach is to arm the public with the sense of alertness and wary of what they consume over these medium. One way is to refer to the various reputable media sources before sharing is also vital.