Comms Minister: 197 Unethical Content On Social Media Taken Down In January

Communications and Digital minister Fahmi Fadzil today during the Dewan Rakyat meeting revealed that a total of 197 social media content deemed unethical were taken down or removed in January this year. A total of 101 of such posts were uploaded on Tiktok, he said.

Fahmi explained that three methods were used by social media platform providers to take down these unethical content. The first of which is artificial intelligence (AI) technology that automatically detects and removes content if it is found to violate community guidelines. “The second is through reports from social media users, and the third is by request from enforcement agencies or bodies,” he added.

Replying to House of Representatives member Zahir Hassan’s query regarding the government’s efforts to block the accounts of users who are involved in uploading unethical content, the minister said the Ministry of Communications and Digital has not applied for such actions. Instead, it had only instructed social media platforms to take down the uploaded content.

In regards to the ministry’s policies on misused social media applications, Fahmi said the implementation of the short-term policy will involve operational aspects of monitoring and enforcement on a case-by-case basis. “The policy will be adopted and the strengthening of cooperation with platform providers including TikTok and other social sites owned by Meta and Twitter will be done through a co-regulatory framework,” he elaborated.

For medium- and long-term approaches, the minister said these will include review and amendments to the existing laws – an effort which his ministry is currently undertaking, as revealed back in December of last year. This is to ensure that the laws are always relevant and practical to the current situation.

Despite this, Fahmi assured that his ministry will still continue to allow and even strengthen the freedom of expression. However, he stressed that this does not give the right to any party to spread slander or misinformation to the public.

(Source: Bernama)