SINGAPORE — On Monday (14 Nov), Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, took to her Facebook to complain about the Twitter app’s tracking feature.
In her Facebook post, Mdm Ho addressed her complaint to Mr Elon Musk, Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer and also the tech billionaire who purchased the social media platform last year for US$44 billion.
Mdm Ho complained to Mr Musk that tracking is being set as default for the Twitter app with no option to change the setting to no tracking and “pretend we can change that setting later somewhere else”.
“Please play straight and don’t do this, ok?” asks Mdm Ho.
Apart from being married to PM Lee, Madam Ho is also widely known for her former career as the chief executive officer of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, Temasek Holdings before she stepped down from the position in October last year.
She is also being deemed an influential figure not just in Singapore, but worldwide, as she took the 33rd spot in Forbes’ World 100 Most Powerful Women in 2021.
Mdm Ho who is active on Facebook has over 148,000 followers, made an average of 39 posts a day for the past 12 months — according to data from CrowdTangle.
In response to her post, most of the commenters cheered her for the comments to Mr Musk while some questioned the validity of her complaint.
Michael Tan shared a screenshot of his device and wrote, “It’s not on by default and it can be disabled.”
A few others also shared that they were able to make the changes to the tracking, showing screenshots of their devices.
Furthermore, Mdm Ho should not be referring to the Twitter app on Iphones because iOS for Iphones requires apps to request users’ permission before tracking can be allowed and request for tracking is disabled for those who turn off the option to allow the requests to be made by apps.
Although the post remains accessible, but a check on Mdm Ho’s Facebook page shows that this post is missing from her Facebook timeline.
Mdm Ho’s posting was also shared on Hardwarezone Forum where forumers questioned why the post was made on Facebook instead of Twitter where Mr Musk is active at.
A commenter on her Facebook post also wrote, “Ma’am, I think he doesn’t use FB. He’s at Twitter; You should just tweet him.”
The forumers also asked why Mdm Ho has not commented on the recent news of Temasek Holdings’ loss in investments over the bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
According to an exclusive report by Forbes, Temasek Holdings has US$205 million invested into FTX which has filed for bankruptcy in the United States.
Temasek Holdings is said to be the second-largest outside investor on the capitalization table, with 7 million shares for its estimated investment sum of US$205 million
It invested in all three of FTX’s major funding rounds — the Series B, Series B extension and Series C, in July, October last year and early January this year.
Two of the investments into FTX took place just after Mdm Ho stepped down in Oct last year while the initial investment in July last year seems to have been made under her watch.
With its US$320 million stake on the brink of being worthless, a Temasek spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday that they were “aware of the developments” and were “engaging FTX in our capacity as shareholder.”
