JOHOR BARU: Online platforms must step up their cooperation and comply with Malaysia’s strengthened online safety laws, says Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching.
She added Malaysia already had a robust legal framework to regulate digital platforms and protect users, but the effectiveness of the measures ultimately depended on these platforms’ willingness to comply.
“Our legal framework is sufficient to regulate platforms for the safety of the people.
“However, the main challenge is the extent to which these platforms are willing to cooperate and comply with our laws,” she said.
Teo added that non-compliance persists despite platforms being aware that they could face enforcement action and heavy financial penalties if they breached the regulations.
She said this in her speech before opening the state-level Safe Internet, Family, Education and Community Networking Convention here yesterday.
Teo said Malaysia amended the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 in December 2024 and subsequently brought the Online Safety Act 2025 into force on Jan 1 this year.
She said the government had also introduced the Child Protection Code and Risk Mitigation Code under the online-safety framework to place greater responsibility on platforms such as Meta and other service providers.
Teo said the government was also taking proactive measures to protect children online through the Tunggu16 initiative, which requires parental controls for social media activities involving those under 16.
On the campaign, which has been running since January last year, Teo said the programme has been expanded to raise awareness among children, parents, schools and communities about online threats.
As of July 31, she said, 13,450 programmes had been conducted nationwide, involving more than two million participants, including students, teachers, local communities and other stakeholders.
Teo urged parents to ask their children about the applications they used and their online friends while creating an environment where they would feel safe to report harassment or threats.
“Our approach must shift from merely ‘prohibiting’ to ‘educating and guiding’. We want to produce a digitally-literate generation with moral resilience and the wisdom to assess risks,” she said.
Teo also called on Parent-Teacher Associations to use their grassroots networks to spread online-safety messages more effectively among parents and students.
