KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 24 — A report on internet censorship here has found that there were 149 confirmed blocked websites as of June 2024, compared to 530 in its previous year’s edition.

However, Sinar Project and Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) said in the State of Internet Censorship Country Report that this did not necessarily indicate less restriction now.

Instead, it said it had used different pool in its previous edition that it said made direct comparison difficult.

"We tested against the list of scam websites published by the Securities Commission Malaysia during the previous coverage period, hence the higher number of confirmed websites then,” it said.

Of the websites censored, most were blocked for pornography, gambling, and extremism. Others featured LGBTQ+ elements while some news and political sites were also affected.

Some sites that were blocked included Utusan TV, Asia Sentinel, and Guang Ming Daily. However, the blocks may no longer be in effect.

"The blocking of gay dating app Grindr in Malaysia and in the other 12 countries is an indicator that governments are blocking websites to marginalise specific groups,” said the report.

The findings are based on data collected in a one year period from July 1, 2023 of which 2,384 websites were tested.

As of June 30, the test list contains 1,666 websites in the Global Test List and 509 websites in the Malaysia Test List.

Also in the report, TikTok recorded 1,862 content takedowns requests — a 447.6 per cent increase — in the second half of 2023 while Meta restricted access to over 4,700 items as reported by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

These include content related to illegal gambling, scams, regulated goods, religion-based hate speech, government criticisms, and racially or religiously divisive and bullying content.

Additionally, they restricted access to over 470 items reported by government agencies, such as the Malaysian Ministry of Health and Commercial Crime Investigation Department, for alleged violation of local laws pertaining to regulated goods, fraud, and scams.

The report also said that with the exception of cases where the website owner had directly sought the attention of MCMC such as Utusan TV, there were no official reasons provided for blocking these websites.

Additionally, there was no notice issued to the website owners or to the public prior to the takedown.

In August 2024, MCMC reported that it has blocked a total of 24,277 websites between between 2018 and August 1, classified into various categories, which are online gambling (39 per cent), pornography/obscene content (31 per cent), copyright infringement (14 per cent), other harmful sites such as unregistered product sales, incitement and defamation crimes (12 per cent), prostitution (two per cent) and unlawful investments/scams (two per cent).

Methods of blocking were primarily through DNS tampering, where network providers would serve a block page, "address not found” error, or unknown pages.