Malaysia Seeks Commitment To Social Media Platforms To Handle Cyber Crime

Malaysian Minister of Communications, Fahmi Fadzil (photo: x @fahmi_fadzil)

JAKARTA - Malaysia is seeking a commitment from social media platforms to deal with cyber crimes that include fraud, cyberbullying, and child pornography. This was said by the Minister of Communications of Malaysia on Wednesday, July 24, because the government tried to crack down on harmful content on the internet.

Malaysia reported a sharp increase in malicious content on social media earlier this year and urged social media companies, including parent Facebook, Meta, and short video platform TikTok, to increase monitoring on their platforms.

In the first three months of 2024, the government referred 51,638 cases to social media platforms for further action, up from 42,904 cases recorded over the past year, according to Malaysian authorities.

Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said regulators had issued directions to social media companies to provide feedback on government concerns about cybercrime and malicious content found on their platforms.

"There is a platform that is more willing to cooperate (with the government) and some of its cooperation is unsatisfactory," he said at a regular press conference on Wednesday.

Fahmi said Meta has the highest compliance level with the government's request to remove harmful content found on its platform, with Facebook recording a compliance rate of 85%, Instagram 88%, and WhatsApp 79%.

"TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance from China, has a compliance level of 76%, a Telegram messaging platform of 65%, and an X 25%," added Fahmi, without providing details on how that level was measured. Unfortunately, Meta, X, TikTok, and Telegram did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fahmi said Malaysian communications regulators could flag content that violates local law to social media companies, but it's up to the platform to decide whether to remove content that violates their own community guidelines.

Malaysian authorities consider online gambling, fraud, child pornography and fishing, cyber bullying, as well as racial, religious and royal content as dangerous.

Meta and TikTok have limited the number of posts and social media accounts in Malaysia in the first six months of 2023, data published by the company last year.