Amendments to the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (Act 588), the first proposal since it was enacted 26 years ago, will be tabled in Parliament next Monday (Dec 2), according to Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil. He said this after officiating a carnival in Kuala Lumpur on Nov 30.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Australia has passed a law banning children under the age of 16 from using social media.
00:08Are we going to bring this bill to the parliament?
00:13We haven't discussed this matter yet.
00:15We are following and investigating steps and efforts in many other countries, not just Australia.
00:23At the same time, we all know that all social media platforms
00:28ban children under the age of 13 from having an account on their platform.
00:34WhatsApp, for example, has set a age limit of 16 years.
00:40So, anyone under the age of 16 cannot use WhatsApp.
00:45So, at the very least, based on community guidelines or community standards
00:52provided by these platforms,
00:56we want to know what steps these platforms will take
01:01to ensure that children under the age they set
01:07do not use these platforms.
01:09So, we will start with their own age limit.
01:15If we see that they are trying or not trying,
01:19then I think we will investigate.
01:21What Australia is doing is the first in the world.
01:25But for many parties, there is a question of how it will be implemented.
01:32But in Malaysia, as I said before,
01:35there are three main things that we focus on
01:39in terms of child abuse, gambling and scams,
01:46cyberbullying, and sexual crimes against children and paedophilia.
01:50So, this is our focus for the future.
01:54There are a number of documents and laws that we will bring.
01:58Before this, we have changed the definition of the Mule Account.
02:02We will continue with the change to the Penal Code, God willing,
02:07which will give a definition of cyberbullying,
02:10including crimes such as doxxing.
02:14Also, as I said before,
02:17this year, God willing, we will bring a change to the Communications Act
02:21to provide some improvements to the Act,
02:27including for social media.
02:30But we will also look at the issues of industry development
02:33and network safety.
02:35And God willing, in the future,
02:38there will be another law on network safety that will be brought.
02:43All these efforts and initiatives are to ensure a safer internet,
02:48especially for children and their families.
03:13For more information, visit www.fema.gov