PETALING JAYA: The directors of Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, can be held legally liable under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (CMA) for any harmful content on the social media platform, says a cyberlaw expert.
Lawyer Derek Fernandez said this was allowed by Section 244 of the Act.
“The directors of Meta can be charged with wilfully providing the means and aiding and abetting criminals or criminal activity if they refuse to act promptly after being told crimes are being committed,” he said.
Section 244(1) of the CMA states that senior officers such as a director, chief executive officer, manager, secretary or other similar officer within a company are guilty of offences committed by that company unless they can prove the offence was committed without their knowledge, consent or connivance, and that all reasonable precautions to the prevent the commission of the offence were taken.
Fellow and chair of Information Technology Computer Science at the Academy of Sciences Malaysia Prof Datuk Dr Mohamed Ridza Wahiddin also pointed to the CMA.
“In particular, offensive content is prohibited under Section 211 of the Act. To be charged under 211 (1) and liable under 211 (2),” he said.
Prof Mohamed Ridza said Section 233 of the Act, which deals with improper use of network facilities or network service, can also be used.
On bringing Meta to court, he acknowledged that there are loopholes in Malaysia’s cyberlaws.
“Hence, the Prime Minister just announced the need to address these and hopefully they will be tabled in Parliament very soon,” he said.
“I anticipate it is not going to be an easy case to be decided in our courts.”
Fong Choong Fook, executive chairman of LGMS Bhd, a specialist cybersecurity testing firm, said it is good that the MCMC was taking an aggressive stance against social media platforms.
“In the case of Meta, there are too many scammers operating fake advertisement schemes on the platform, and it needs a much more effective qualifying mechanism to filter out scam operators from genuine businesses.
“Fundamentally, Meta does not perform a KYC on advertisers, and this is also the root cause why Facebook is inundated with scams concealed as advertisements,” he said.
KYC refers to “Know Your Customer” practices that companies use to verify the identity of new customers.
Fong added that Facebook should be responsible for at least validating the identity of advertisers before allowing their advertisements to be posted, yet the platform does not do so.
Meta is already facing a barrage of international criticism and lawsuits for its alleged failure to remove harmful content.
Last year, it was sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) over fraudulent cryptocurrency advertisements on Facebook.
Scammers had made use of advertising on Facebook to target consumers with fake articles featuring purported public figure endorsements of cryptocurrency investment schemes.
Users who signed up for the schemes were pressured to continuously deposit money to fund their investment, with one losing over A$650,000 (RM2mil).
The social media platform was accused by the ACCC of being aware of the celebrity endorsement scams but not taking sufficient action to curb them.
The German government introduced a Network Enforcement Law in an effort to combat Nazi-related incitement, defamation, as well as phrases and symbols on social media.
Under the law, social media platforms such as Facebook could be fined as much as €50mil (RM253mil) should they fail to delete comments and posts violating German law.
Meanwhile, the state of Arkansas in the United States sued both Meta and TikTok over claims that content on their platforms was harmful to users.
The lawsuit accused Meta of having exposed users to content that contributed to mental health issues among youth in the state.
However, the media platforms countered by claiming that it had taken steps to protect younger users with age verification and the removal of content relating to suicide, self-injury or eating disorders.
In Russia, Meta was fined US$27mil (RM126mil) for declining to remove unspecified banned content in September 2021.
According to a Reuters report, Russian authorities warned the social media giant that it would face a fine of up to 10% of its annual turnover in the country if it did not comply.
Russian officials had alleged that Meta had repeatedly failed to remove posts containing child pornography, drug abuse, and extremist content.
Meta was hit with its largest fine thus far late last month, when the Irish data regulator penalised the company €1.2bil (RM6bil) for having breached European Union data protection rules.
Meta and its Kenya-based content moderation partners, Sama and Majorel, are also facing an ongoing lawsuit in the country for alleged unlawful termination and discrimination.
Meta was also sued by Ethiopians and Kenyan rights groups last December for allegedly fuelling the Tigray War by failing to employ enough safety measures on Facebook.
