Chilling Effect and Fake News Laws: Lessons from East and Southeast Asia

Abstract This chapter identifies key parameters of the chilling effect and bridges them with international human rights principles to develop a structured analytical tool, the Chilling Effect Ranking (CER), for assessing the chilling effect of “fake news” regulations. Applying this framework to seven East and Southeast Asian jurisdictions—China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea—the chapter uncovers the underlying mechanisms behind the chilling effects produced by diverse fake news laws in the region, offering insights that go beyond Western-centric perspectives. The results show that no jurisdiction fully eliminates chilling effects, mainly due to legal ambiguities that allow government overreach. However, the intensity of these effects ranges from moderate to high. The chapter concludes that while chilling effects are not an inevitable byproduct of laws targeting falsehoods that cause public harm, they often stem from design flaws within the legal framework itself, which can enable such laws to serve as tools for state control and deter free expression.