MCMC social media platform licensing requirement: Who watches the watchers?

It is not like MCMC is going to insert any new technology or increase the manpower of the social media platforms to reduce the cases of fraud, scams or sexually predatory contents on their platform.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

That Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is complaining about Meta removing his tribute to the late Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh is raising the question as to how will Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) requirement that social media and internet messaging services platform apply for a licence, purportedly to combat the rise in cybercrime, going to work.

As Anwar himself directly experienced today, social media platforms like Facebook already have a standard which they use to combat scams, online fraud, cyberbullying, sexual crimes against children, terrorism and misinformation.

As users, we can report against a content that we find offensive or criminal by clicking on the report button.

Once we click it, our report will be investigated by the social media platforms internal regulators. If they agree with our view, they might take down the offending content or even de-platform the content creator. If they disagree with our view, nothing will happen to the content.

In the case of Anwar’s post about Haniyeh, Anwar might have viewed it as a tribute to a fallen hero, but somebody else might have  deemed it to be a post that promotes terrorism. When they reported it to Meta, Meta’s internal regulators agreed with the user, and took down Anwar’s post.

Anwar has predictably taken great offense to Meta’s action.

“Meta has once again acted disgracefully and has insulted the struggle of the Palestinian people by removing the video and condolence post criticising the assassination of the late Ismail Haniyeh,” he posted on Facebook this morning (August 1).

“It is unreasonable that a tribute honouring a fighter who strives to liberate his homeland from tyranny and suffering is deemed dangerous,” he added.

The question however is, will Anwar follow the golden rule on the matter and ‘not  do unto others what he does not  want done unto him.’

In the same way that Anwar feels that it is unreasonable that his post about the late Haniyeh was deemed dangerous and taken down by Meta, once the licencing requirement is enforced, there is a high chance that MCMC might revoke the licence of a social media platform that continuously post or refuses to take down contents that the government finds dangerous, although others deems it to be reasonable.

What is Anwar going to do to prevent what happened to him today from happening to anyone else in the future?

At the end of the day, when you have this sort of regulations to govern free speech, no matter how genuine or noble your motives are, it will inevitably only serve as a means to aid the powers that be to suppress dissenting viewpoints.

As the Roman poet Juvenal asked almost 2000 years ago, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” or “who watches the watchers?”.

In the same way that social media platforms are using their powers to regulate free speech on their platform to suppress narratives that exalt causes or personalities that they disapprove of, once our government usurps these powers from the social media platforms,  it will inevitably do the same to stifle any narrative that is against its self-interest.

MCMC might advocate for the licencing requirement under the pretext that it is necessary to combat cases of scams, online fraud, cyberbullying, and sexual crimes against children, but the fact of the matter is that social media platforms themselves already have internal means to combat all these varieties of cybercrimes.

It is highly unlikely that MCMC’s licensing requirement will do anything to improve or enhance the ability of social media platforms to prevent cybercrimes through their existing internal method. It is not like MCMC is going to insert any new technology or increase the manpower of the social media platforms to reduce the cases of fraud, scams or sexually predatory contents on their platform.

All MCMC is likely going to do through this licensing requirement is judge how the social media platforms will react towards a handful of complaints that the government will direct to these social media platforms. If the social media platforms act in a way that is agreeable to the government, its licence will be renewed. If not, it might be revoked.

Of these handful of complaints that the government will direct to social media platforms, the ones that will be actionable are the ones that would have been acted upon by the social media platform, even if the government was not involved. Social media platforms do not need to be told by the government to remove contents that display excessive violence or pornography on their platform. They are already doing it as it is, even without government supervision.

As for the complaints that it will not be acting upon, these are likely going to be contents that are not universally acknowledged to be wrong, but merely contents that the government disapproves of.

At the end of the day, what this licensing requirement will do is just install the government as the alpha dog of content regulation hierarchy, which will in turn likely ensure that it is only the government narrative or the narrative that the government approves of, that will propagate in the social media space in the country.

Dissenting narratives will likely just be deemed as inappropriate, as Meta has deemed Anwar’s own dissenting narrative in regards to the Palestinian struggle as “inappropriate”, before pulling it down under the pretext of protecting the netizens.