The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has denied of being used as a tool to silence criticism of the government.
The agency under the Communicaiton Miisty led by Fahmi Fadzil, has been strongly criticised after a spate of media sites were either suspended or taken down after alleged critical comments were made on the current government.
In a statement the commission denied that it is being used to prevent public discourse on issues pertaining to the government or its policies, as this implies that Putrajaya and other regulatory bodies are unable to tolerate criticism.
“This perception is inaccurate and does not reflect the operations of MCMC and social media platforms,” it said.
MCMC said “Although criticism of the government or politicians is allowed, there are legal limitations to media freedom, particularly when it comes to sensitive issues such as the 3Rs,” it said.
This comes as the agemcy noted that 72 per cent of its requests for the removal of content across all social media platforms involved online gambling and scams.
“As of June 13, as much as 53 per cent of online content removal requests by MCMC across all platforms were related to online gambling.
“Additionally, 19 per cent involved online scams, 15 per cent were identified as fake news, six per cent were related to race, religion, and royalty (the 3Rs), and five per cent involved harassment,” MCMC said in a statement today.
It added that ensuring a safe online environment is a shared goal between the commission and social media platforms.
“To this end, social media platforms routinely and consistently perform proactive removal themselves against content that violates their community standards,” MCMC said.
Malaysia reportedly made 1,862 requests to TikTok for the removal of certain content in the second half of last year, more than any other country.
The nation that made the second-most requests during that period was Australia, with just 651.
On its part, TikTok said it received 2,202 requests from Malaysia last year, as opposed to 70 the preceding year.
Similarly, Meta has also restricted 8,600 pieces of content in Malaysia throughout last year, a staggering increase from the 553 content restrictions imposed in 2022.
Nonetheless, MCMC said it would only submit requests to online platforms if there was content deemed to have breached community standards or Malaysian laws, and that the actual removal of such content was based on the platform’s own assessments.
In the fourth quarter of last year, one social media platform proactively removed 1.8 million pieces of online content without any request from the authorities.
“These include content promoting bullying and harassment, privacy violations, hate speech, misinformation, spam, coordinated inauthentic behaviour, misinformation that directly contributes to interference with the functioning of the political process, and certain highly deceptive manipulated media.
