Malaysia has the dubious honour of being ranked second in Asia for youth cyberbullying, with at least ten incidents reported daily, according to Bangi MP Syahredzan Johan.
PETALING JAYA: The growing threat of crimes carried out online, including through scams, fraud, cyberbullying and illegal online gambling, is reason enough for the government to require that social media platforms be licensed, a DAP MP said.
Syahredzan Johan said Malaysians lost over RM1 billion to online scams in 2023, while the country suffered the dubious honour of being ranked second in Asia for youth cyberbullying, with at least ten incidents reported daily.
“The problem is compounded by the fact that social media platforms have not been doing enough to moderate and control the content published.
“They have not done enough to take responsibility for the harm being churned out on their platforms,” the Bangi MP told FMT.
Calls to regulate social media platforms have heightened following the recent death of TikTok influencer A Rajeswary, also known as Esha, allegedly after she was cyberbullied.
Last week, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced that social media and internet messaging services with at least eight million registered users in Malaysia must apply to the commission for a licence from Aug 1, with enforcement beginning on Jan 1, 2025.
The new policy is aimed at creating a safer internet environment for children and families, MCMC said.
Acknowledging that the process may be open to abuse, Syahredzan said the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 provides review and appeal mechanisms to safeguard against it.
These mechanisms will be made clear when the licences are applied for, he said.
Syahredzan also said that it would be “unfair and, frankly, a dereliction of our collective duty as a society to protect the most vulnerable” if the idea of licensing social media platforms is rejected out of hand even without understanding why it is necessary.
The requirement that social media platforms be responsible for content is not unique to Malaysia, he said, citing the United Kingdom’s recent Online Safety Act which obliges them to protect children from harmful content.
Responding to lawyer-cum-activist Ambiga Sreenevasan’s claim that the unity government was the country’s “most dictatorial” administration for retaining the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 and now wanting to licence social media platforms, Syahredzan said such accusations were “hyperbolic”.
He said these type of claims whitewashed incidents such as “Ops Lalang”, a major crackdown in the 1980s which saw the arrest of many activists and opposition politicians, including DAP’s Lim Kit Siang, and the suspension of several newspapers.
“There is a whole generation of young people who did not go through those traumatic times,” said Syahredzan.
He said such comments would give the impression that “the most undemocratic and oppressive incident to happened in our history” was a decision to licence big social media platform owners.
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