Online gambling and scams have become the most common offenses committed on various social media platforms in the first three weeks of this year, said Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil. According to him, 84% of the 18,785 illegal content most requested to be taken down by MCMC was related to online gambling and scams. The remaining content involved cyberbullying (5%), unauthorized product and service advertisements (4%) and other offenses.
It also involved platforms such as Facebook (FB), YouTube and TikTok, with the most requests to be taken down being on FB at 67%, TikTok (18%) and YouTube (13%). However, Fahmi later stated that there were still platforms that allowed criminal activities online and ensured that they were subject to certain restrictions after the Internet Messaging and Social Media Services Licensing was fully implemented.
Commenting further, Fahmi said, the gambling and fraud content is displayed using the Malay language and then targets users among the citizens of this country. Through it, they teach how to gamble and this also happens on Facebook, TikTok and even YouTube. Therefore, it is a requirement for the platforms involved to be licensed, and they are subject to restrictions on illegal content.