Anwar's Meta episode: a taste of his own medicine

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's complaint about Meta removing his tribute to the late Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh comes just as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) imposes licensing for social media and internet messaging services.

As Anwar himself has directly experienced, 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.

Our report will then be investigated by their internal regulators. If they agree with our view, they might take down the offending content or even ban the user. If they disagree, 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, its internal regulators agreed with the user, and took down Anwar’s post.  

Anwar has predictably taken great offence 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 today.

"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 and not do unto others what he does not want done unto him?

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

What is Anwar going to do to prevent what happened to him 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.

Two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Juvenal asked, "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 and suppress narratives 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 licensing 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 these platforms to reduce the cases of fraud, scams or sexual predatory contents on their platforms.
 
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 from the government. If they act in a way that is agreeable to the government, their 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 anyway, even if the government was not involved. 

Social media platforms do not need to be told by a 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 argument that these platforms will not take action against problematic contents, 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 only the government's narrative remains.

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

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of MalaysiaNow.