Malaysia to take authorized motion in opposition to Meta over dangerous content material | World News

Malaysia mentioned on Friday it would take authorized motion in opposition to Fb dad or mum firm Meta Platforms for failing to take away "undesirable" posts, the strongest measure the nation has taken up to now over such content material.

Final 12 months's intently fought nationwide election has led to an increase in ethnic tensions and since coming to energy in November, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's administration has vowed to curb what it calls provocative posts that contact on race and faith.

Fb has just lately been "suffering from" a major quantity of undesirable content material referring to race, royalty, faith, defamation, impersonation, on-line playing and rip-off ads, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Fee mentioned in an announcement.

It additionally mentioned Meta had did not take enough motion regardless of its repeated requests and that authorized motion was obligatory to advertise accountability for cybersecurity and to guard customers.

Meta didn't instantly reply to a request for remark. The fee additionally didn't instantly reply to a request for touch upon what authorized motion could be taken.

Race and faith are thorny points in Malaysia, which has a majority of Muslim ethnic Malays alongside important ethnic Chinese language and ethnic Indian minorities.

Commentary on the nation's revered royals can be a delicate challenge and destructive remarks in direction of them might be tried beneath sedition legal guidelines.

The motion in opposition to Fb comes simply weeks forward of regional elections in six states which might be anticipated to pit Anwar's multi-ethnic coalition in opposition to a conservative Malay Muslim alliance.

Fb is Malaysia's largest social media platform with an estimated 60% of its inhabitants of 33 million having a registered account.

Globally, huge social media companies that embrace Meta, Google's YouTube and TikTok are sometimes beneath regulatory scrutiny over content material posted on their platforms.

Some Southeast Asian governments have incessantly requested that content material be taken down.

In 2020, Vietnam threatened to close down Fb within the nation if it didn't bow to authorities stress to censor extra native political content material on its platform. It mentioned final 12 months that social media platforms working in Vietnam eliminated greater than 3,200 posts and movies within the first quarter that contained false data and violated the nation's legislation.

In Indonesia, Fb in 2019 took down a whole lot of native accounts, pages and teams linked to a faux information syndicate