Issues in social media licensing

I READ with interest the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) plan to licence social media platforms from Aug 1.

As a concerned citizen, I strongly believe in the need for a clear regulatory framework to maintain a safe online space, especially in the wake of a recent cyberbullying-linked tragedy.

I am also intrigued when I read the reports about the Communications Ministry’s compliance ranking for several main social media platforms. According to Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil, the compliance rate across social media platforms was 84% for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, 76% for TikTok, and 65% for Telegram while X ranked the lowest at 25%.

While it is somewhat reassuring that a quantitative scale exists for the authorities to measure the safety compliance levels of these platforms, the figures raise several questions.

First, what was the methodology used by the government? Generally speaking, when giving ratings on particular entities, it is assumed that rankings are made for entities within the same category of goods and services.

However, anyone who has used any of the aforementioned social media platforms would know that they serve rather different purposes despite being categorised under the same “social media” nomenclature. For example, people generally do not use WhatsApp for the same reason they use Instagram.

While you can send messages on Instagram, and send pictures on WhatsApp, the two are rarely used interchangeably because they ultimately serve different purposes. This raises the question of what the compliance ratings mean in practice; it does not make much sense to impose the same compliance rating on platforms that serve different purposes because their respective regulations should differ slightly.

Second, there appears to be a discrepancy between the government’s perceived level of compliance by social media platforms and that reported by the providers themselves. Does the government take these statistics into account when devising its compliance rankings?

For the sake of transparency, the government must be able to reconcile the compliance figures published by social media providers with its own regulatory standards. Facebook and TikTok, for instance, have their own transparency reports, which outline the actions taken by these providers to act in accordance with government regulatory standards. Failure to take into account various sources of data risks us running down a very slippery slope of ranking (or rather, rewarding) social media providers by who kowtow to the government the most, rather than based on objective statistics.

There is also the question of how the government obtains data for these compliance rankings. Of course, for some platforms such as TikTok and Facebook, this is easily done if the government refers to the transparency reports mentioned earlier.

But in the case of platforms such as WhatsApp, where messages are meant to be end-to-end encrypted for privacy, how does the government determine compliance?

This concern is further exacerbated when we consider that Fahmi recently announced the government will take action on threatening comments made on chat platforms including WhatsApp. This seems to suggest that we live under the constant surveillance of a “Big Brother” state.

Finally, there appears to be a lack of consistency on the government’s part in terms of ensuring that its actions are commensurate with its own statistics. Following the news on social media control, the most regularly summoned names to meet with the government seem to be Facebook’s Meta and TikTok, respectively. Yet, when we look at the rankings, these platforms are not the lowest in terms of compliance.

Does that mean the Communications Ministry acts on its own agenda rather than based on the statistics, which ironically were produced by themselves? If true, then the overarching objective of preventing cyberbullying becomes severely undermined, and it would appear that the government is more interested in controlling particular platforms based on its own whims.

While social media regulation is necessary, we should not condone the creation of a nanny state, especially if, ironically, one of the objectives is to stem cyberbullying.

SALAHUDDIN MOHD SHUKRI

Penang