By Jacqueline David
KUCHING: All social media operators have been given a month’s grace period to register with the code of conduct for social media licensing.
In stating this Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said it was important to ensure social media operators based abroad protected the rights of local consumers.
“I see that they are cooperative , maybe one or two that think they are bigger than a sovereign country, but we have to remind them that they are making money in Malaysia, therefore they have to abide by the law of this country.
“There are no two ways about, any platform that has more than eight million users in Malaysia must register with MCMC,” he said while on a working visit to the National Information Dissemination Centre (Nadi) Taman Sukma, here Monday.
He stressed that every platform operator should be fair to all users and not just act when MCMC intervenes.
He also mentioned that the federal government sees the need for Malaysian-based platforms, to abide by the laws of the country and sees a need for new acts such as the Online Act.
“As for licensing, we have set guidelines, the so-called code of conduct whereby platforms, for example, must attend to complaints by all users at any time.
“If they fail to do it, then there are actions we can take,” he said.
Regarding censorship taken by the platform itself, Fahmi citing as example the Prime Minister sending a condolence message following the Hamas leader’s murder, he said it seems that there are two standards, when it comes to Palestine.
“Almost all of them are censored, almost all of them are restrained, even the Prime Minister’s posts on social media can be taken down. Only because he sent his condolences over the murder of the Hamas leader.
“As an independent, sovereign country which has diplomatic relations with all countries including Palestine, the government’s stance must be respected by these platforms,” he said.
