KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 16 — Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil has denied claims that the government has expunged content from social media platforms in response to criticism directed towards him or the Unity Government.

Instead, he said the decision was because a significant portion, or 70 per cent of them involved promotions of illegal sales and online scams.

Fahmi also shared statistics on harmful content for the current year, stating that 25,642 pieces of content were removed compared to 1,019 in 2022. Of the content removed this year, 18,140 were scams and illegal sales, followed by 4,008 fake news content, 2,858 offensive content, 599 with pornographic material, and 37 threatening content.

"This year, we removed 18,140 scam content. During Annuar Musa’s time (former Communication and Multimedia Minister) how many were removed? Only 315.

"Why blame me when he did not do enough to combat scams? he said in a Facebook post today.

Fahmi, who is also the Unity Government’s spokesperson was commenting on a news article titled ‘Padam Kandungan: Langkah ke Arah Cengkaman Media’ (Deleting Content: A Step Towards Media Control) published by Harakahdaily today.

According to the local media, companies like Facebook, Meta, and TikTok have confirmed receiving an increase in requests from the Malaysian government in the first six months of 2023, urging them to either delete certain contents or block user accounts on their platforms. — Bernama