Malaysia stated on Friday it can take authorized motion towards Facebook guardian Meta Platforms for failing to take away “undesirable” posts, the strongest measure the nation has taken to this point over such content material.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration has vowed to curb what it calls provocative posts that contact on race and faith since coming to energy in November after a carefully fought election within the Southeast Asian nation that has led to an increase in ethnic tensions.
Fb has lately been “affected by” a major quantity of undesirable content material referring to race, royalty, faith, defamation, impersonation, on-line playing and rip-off commercials, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Fee stated in a press release.
It stated Meta had did not take enough motion regardless of its repeated requests and that authorized motion was vital to advertise accountability for cybersecurity and to guard shoppers.
Meta didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Requested what authorized motion it’d take, the fee stated in an emailed assertion on Saturday that permitting abuse of community services or utility companies could be offences beneath Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Act 1998.
The legislation additionally permits for officers of the corporate to be charged for “wilfully offering means and aiding prison exercise” if immediate motion will not be taken, it stated.
Race and faith are thorny points in Malaysia, which has a majority of Muslim ethnic Malays alongside important ethnic Chinese language and Indian minorities.
Commentary on the nation’s revered royals can also be a delicate difficulty, and detrimental remarks in direction of them could be tried beneath sedition legal guidelines.
The motion towards Fb comes simply weeks forward of elections in six states which might be anticipated to pit Anwar’s multi-ethnic coalition towards a conservative Malay Muslim alliance.
Fb is Malaysia’s greatest social media platform, with an estimated 60 p.c of the nation’s 33 million folks having a registered account.
Globally, large social media companies that embrace Meta, Google’s YouTube and TikTok are sometimes beneath regulatory scrutiny over content material posted on their platforms.
Some Southeast Asian governments have often requested that content material be taken down.
In 2020, Vietnam threatened to close down Fb within the nation if it didn’t conform to authorities calls for to censor extra native political content material on its platform. The federal government stated final 12 months that social media platforms working in Vietnam had eliminated greater than 3,200 posts and movies within the first quarter that contained false info and violated the nation’s legislation.
In Indonesia, Fb in 2019 took down a whole bunch of native accounts, pages and teams linked to a pretend information syndicate.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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