Malaysian minister decries Meta for ‘no remorse’ as scams tap public for US$100 million

Communications chief Fahmi Fadzil calls Meta’s licensing concerns ‘facetious’, says regulation is needed to stamp out scams

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Malaysia’s Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:53am, 6 Dec 2024Updated: 12:22pm, 6 Dec 2024

Social media giant Meta is failing to move fast enough to take down criminal content from its platforms, Malaysia’s communications minister told This Week in Asia, questioning if the owner of Facebook and Instagram has “no remorse” while online scams hammer the public.

The government is set to impose mandatory social media licensing from January 1 in a bid to stamp out scams, online gambling and child sex exploitation targeted at Malaysians.

That will require all social media and internet messaging platforms with at least 8 million local users to sign up to a licence to operate in the country – a regulatory push that has irked tech firms who want control over the legal landscape they operate in.

Asia-Pacific nations are toughening up on social media as they try to stem billions of dollars of losses to online scams and fraud and social harms from sexual exploitation, especially of children. Australia has taken the hardest line, agreeing to roll-out a blanket ban on social media to all under-16s over the next 12 months.

Malaysia’s government has had a specific problem with Meta – which also owns messaging app WhatsApp – saying it has been the least responsive among the social media platforms used by Malaysians when it comes to requests to take down content linked to scams or online gambling.

“The frustration the administration has had with Meta for the longest time is … we spend so much resources communicating with Meta, repeatedly every day, to take down content related to illegal online gambling or scams,” Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil told This Week in Asia in an interview.