KUALA LUMPUR – Social media platform X has recorded the lowest compliance rate with Putrajaya’s requests for action against harmful online content, said Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil.
Fahmi said the platform owned by Elon Musk came “last in class” with a compliance rate of merely 25% despite the government, through the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), raising concerns on issues such as cyberbullying and pornographic content.
“Some social media platforms have been fast (to respond to the MCMC’s call for action) while some have delayed their responses (to the MCMC) and others have not acceded to requests (to take down harmful content).
“Some platforms have willingly cooperated (with the MCMC’s requests for action against such content) while others have provided very unsatisfactory cooperation.
“It can be said that we are not satisfied with platforms that have a compliance rate of less than 79%,” the minister told a press conference at his ministry’s headquarters in Putrajaya today.
Both TikTok and Telegram also marked under 79% compliance, with the two platforms recording 76% and 65%, respectively.
Meanwhile, Fahmi said platforms operated by Meta had been the most responsive to the MCMC’s calls for their content to abide by local laws, with Instagram achieving the highest compliance rate at 88% followed by Facebook (85%) and WhatsApp (79%).
According to information provided by the ministry to the media, X’s policy on pornographic content, its handling of race, religion and royalty (3R) issues, as well as child grooming and cyberbullying matters, are some of the concerns MCMC has with the platform.
Despite Facebook’s relatively high compliance rate, issues persist with content on online gambling, scams, targeted advertisements and harmful artificial intelligence (AI) generated content.
“All platforms have online crime issues with content that could endanger the public. For example, the biggest issue with Facebook is related to scams, with the Bukit Aman Commercial Crimes Department’s investigations finding losses between RM8 million and RM132 million from January to June linked with non-existent investments advertised on Facebook.
“The biggest problem is how the platform continues to be misused by certain criminals to victimise the rakyat (by) stealing their savings through scams,” Fahmi said.
The minister also said the cabinet had today decided that the police, the Attorney-General’s Chambers and MCMC will take immediate action to streamline and strengthen investigation and prosecution procedures for online crimes.
Fahmi added that he is scheduled to meet “nearly all” platform providers in Singapore between July 28 and 30, following MCMC’s written demand to certain providers for their responses on the prevalence of online crimes.
“Beginning early this year and as of two days ago, MCMC has submitted over 100,000 complaints to Meta for them to remove scam content. Meta has to be more proactive (by) using AI to terminate efforts by those misusing their platforms for scamming purposes.
“During the meetings, I will emphasise that each platform has its own problems that have to be resolved.”
In April, MCMC said it had filed significantly more reports to online platform providers in the first three months of 2024 than in the entirety of last year.
The commission said that between January and March this year, it had submitted 51,638 reports to online platform providers regarding harmful content on social media and over-the-top platforms.
MCMC added that the figure, which was based on the commission’s statistics, was much higher compared to the 42,904 cases recorded throughout last year. – July 24, 2024