Malaysia’s ban requests for posts and accounts on Meta, TikTok jump six times in 2023

A record-high number of restricted content on TikTok and Meta’s platforms in Malaysia for 2023 – all on government requests.

The report from Reuters highlights that for the first six months of 2023, there’s a jump in the official requests from the Malaysian government to remove social media posts and accounts. This is seen as ironic by some, given that Malaysia Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's administration came to power in November 2022 on a reformist platform and promises to protect freedom of speech.

So far, the government has denied allegations of wrongdoing, instead clarifying that its actions were taken to curb provocative posts that touch on race, religion and royalty.

For the first six months of 2023, Meta has restricted approximately 3,100 pages and posts on Facebook and Instagram from Malaysian users – they were reported to have allegedly violated local laws, according to data published in the firm's twice-yearly Transparency Report.

Compared to the previous six months, the January-June 2023 figure is six times higher and the highest since the company began reporting content restrictions in Malaysia in 2017.

ByteDance’s TikTok released a similar report and stated that it had received 340 requests from the Malaysian government to remove or restrict content between January and June 2023, affecting 890 posts and accounts. TikTok removed or restricted 815 of those for violating local laws or the platform's community guidelines. Again, this is the highest figure since it began reporting requests from Malaysia in 2019, the data showed.

The total TikTok restrictions in the first six months of 2023 were triple the number from that of the second half of 2022. Malaysia made more requests to restrict content on TikTok than any other government in Southeast Asia, the data showed.