Comms minister Fahmi Fadzil said earlier in the week that PDRM have summoned the top management of TikTok to its HQ to address concerns on the platform. Today, the minister says that he has urged the short video platform to implement age verification for users.
He adds that he is “generally very dissatisfied” with the way content moderation concerns on the platform is being handled. The comms minister says that TikTok is “not being serious about taking certain actions to resolve issues we have raised before”. With that, he says that the authorities will not hesitate to penalise countries if necessary.
The minister also says that one of the major issues with social media platforms, including TikTok, is the presence of children under the age of 13. This is in spite of the platform’s own guidelines that disallows those below said age to have an account.
“There must be a mechanism for age verification”, Fahmi said. Though at the same time, he says “we leave it to TikTok, MCMC and the police to study what mechanisms are used and to consider what has been done in other countries as well”.
He also reiterates that representatives of other social media platforms, such as X and those under the Meta umbrella, will be summoned for similar discussions. This may also include age verifications for these platforms as well.
