KUALA LUMPUR: The recent amendment of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 and the introduction of social media licensing were aimed at ensuring better compliance with Malaysian laws and norms.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) deputy managing director Datuk Zulkarnain Mohd Yasin said that currently the community guidelines set by social media and online messaging providers adhere to international norms, particularly those of countries such as the United States.
He said that as these countries do not have a royal institution or do not have to deal with racial and religious sensitivity issues, most providers would not adhere to the agency's request to take down harmful content related to these subjects.
"Previously, we operated as if there were no legislation, with standards or terms set by the platforms.
"If something was wrong with what they set, they would remove the content, but the decision to remove content might not align with national laws.
"Their community standards follow international norms, possibly US law, under which there is no monarchy, and freedom of speech is paramount.
"When it comes to issues involving the monarchy, most platforms will not act - they will leave it be.
"Similarly, matters involving insults to religion might not be a problem for them, but for our country, issues related to religion, race, and the monarchy are very sensitive," Zulkarnain said during TV3's Soal Rakyat interview.
On Dec 9, the Dewan Rakyat approved the amendment to the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (Act 588), which Communication Minister Fahmi Fadzil said was aimed at providing a safer and more sustainable internet network ecosystem for all users.
On Friday, he announced that the government has identified eight social media and online messaging platforms that will be required to obtain a licence under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 by next year.
He said the platforms included Meta's WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter), Google's YouTube, Pavel Durov's Telegram, Tencent's WeChat and ByteDance's TikTok.
He said these platforms had met the threshold of at least eight million users in the country and added that they were not being specifically targeted.
Besides, Zulkarnain said 'different perspectives' from the providers are also a factor behind the abundance of advertisements related to online gambling and prostitution on social media platforms, which are illegal in the country.
He said that as these forms of advertisement are their source of income, it made the providers less sensitive to taking down the contents from their sites despite the MCMC request.
"Why are there so many online gambling advertisements? From a different perspective, their source of income is advertising.
"When the advertisements are related to gambling, platforms have no incentive to remove them because they generate revenue for the platform.
"But for us, gambling is a social ill that we need to address. We don't want influencers promoting gambling, so we see the need to take action," he said.
Thus, he believed the amendments and the social media licensing provide the government with a more comprehensive legal approach needed to address these issues.
He said the amendments, along with the recently announced Code of Conduct (Best Practice) for Internet Messaging Service Providers and Social Media Service Providers, would allow the government to issue a direction to the providers in preventing detriment to social media users.
He said the mechanism includes introducing a certain 'response time' for them to remove the harmful content.
"When we issue instructions for them to follow, we set a specific timeframe and standards they need to comply with. If they fail to comply, it.