PUTRAJAYA, July 4 — Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil today said that his ministry believes in a policy of consistent and proactive engagement when it comes to holding social media companies accountable for failing to remove disinformation and misinformation from their platforms.
He said this when asked whether Malaysia plans to draft a similar law to Australia, which would see the country imposing fines on social media firms over fake news.
In June, Australian daily The Age reported that the country’s government had drafted new laws aimed at addressing the spread of misinformation and fake news on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
According to the proposal presented by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, social media companies would be required to keep evidence showcasing their actions to prevent the spread of such content on the internet. If they fail to do this consistently, they could face substantial fines amounting to millions of dollars.
“We are currently not taking that direction, but we have a consistent and proactive engagement.
“We have previously held meetings with TikTok, Twitter, Meta and most recently, with Telegram.
“This evening, we will have a meeting with Meta again regarding a complaint from Bursa Malaysia Bhd that its CEO Datuk Muhamad Umar Swift has been misrepresented,” he said after attending the Courier Industry Appreciation Day here today.
He said that he hopes the ministry will be able to tackle scammers, criminal violations and other issues through the existing engagement process and cooperation from relevant parties.
On March 19, Bursa Malaysia Bhd identified several Facebook pages that had misrepresented its CEO.
It lodged a complaint with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, asking that it speak to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, regarding its apparent failure to remove questionable content such as fraudulent advertisements from its platform.
