KUALA LUMPUR: A total of 25,959 online content flagged as cyberbullying was removed by the authorities from January to Aug 15 this year, says Datuk Fahmi Fadzil (pic).
According to the Communications Minister, the figure came from the 32,982 applications to remove cyberbullying-related content during that period, marking a 79% approval rate by the authorities.
“25,929 content (79%) content was successfully removed for going against the Communications and Multimedia Act (Act 588) as well as present laws.
“The three platforms that recorded the highest applications were TikTok, Facebook and Tumblr,” said Fahmi during his winding up speech on the 13th Malaysian Plan (13MP) in Parliament on Wednesday (Aug 20).
There were 23,651 cyberbullying content removed on TikTok, 1,738 on Facebook, Tumblr (450), others (120).
“The government views cyberbullying threats seriously and we will continue strengthening efforts to curb this through enforcement measures that are based on public complaints and close cooperation with social media platform providers, as well as the authorities, such as the police,” he said.
Meanwhile, Fahmi said the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) would appeal to the Federal Court a ruling that decriminalises offensive online remarks under Section 233 (1)(a) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (CMA).
“I was informed that the AGC will be filing an appeal to the federal court,” said Fahmi, who added that he would carefully review the appeal process.
On Tuesday (Aug 19), the Court of Appeal ruled that the words “offensive” and “annoy” in Section 233 (1)(a) of the CMA were unconstitutional because it went against the protection for equality before the law and freedom of speech under Article 8 and 10 the Federal Constitution.
A three-member bench led by Federal Court judge Datuk Lee Swee Seng, in a unanimous decision struck down part of the provision, which criminalises the online transmission of comments deemed offensive or intended to annoy.
