SUBANG JAYA, Nov 11 — Social media companies must be more proactive in helping the government combat immoral and illegal activities on their platforms, said Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil.
He said that on numerous occasions, platform providers have been slow to act and only take down immoral content when complaints are made.
For instance, he said, a Facebook page related to sexual crimes against children went viral on X a few weeks ago.
“The Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) contacted the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) for technical assistance on the matter, and I left it to PDRM to take action on this issue.
“I believe Meta (the platform provider) has removed the content, but the problem is that Meta was not proactive. It only acted after the issue was raised. In fact, it should have flagged it from the beginning. This is one of the reasons we want these platforms to be automatically licensed,” he said.
Fahmi said this when met after opening the 8th International Search Conference: Media Evolution-Navigating Sustainability and Disruption in a Dynamic World, organised by Taylor’s University here today.
The minister said social media platform providers must use current artificial intelligence (AI) technology to combat those harmful elements.
“What is the point of having AI? What is the point of them making money from Malaysians — Facebook’s revenue in 2023 was RM2.5 billion — yet it can’t implement automatic filtering for criminal pages like these?” he chided.
Fahmi reiterated that the introduction of the class licence for platform providers under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 is a necessary step to combat three major crimes that have migrated to the virtual space — online scams and gambling, cyberbullying, and sexual crimes against children.
— Bernama
