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MCMC: Almost 22,000 reports received about insensitive '3R' social media posts in six weeks

11 Nov 2019, The Star

KUALA LUMPUR: In the short space of six weeks, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) received 21,296 reports about "3R" (race, religion and royalty) social media posts, the Dewan Rakyat was told.

Works Minister Baru Bian said the complaints were made to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission's (MCMC) hotline, which was launched recently on Aug 17.

"Of these, 19,968 complaints are still being verified by MCMC while action has been taken against 259 complaints.

“Action taken includes investigations against those spreading the information, reports made against such abuses, taking down the content with cooperation from social media platform providers and referring the case to other agencies for further action," he said when answering a question on behalf of Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Eddin Syazlee Shith, who had earlier collapsed in the Dewan Rakyat on Monday (Nov 11).

Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri (GPS-Batang Sadong) asked what the Government was doing to address abuse of racial and religious issues on social media to spread disharmony.

Baru noted that MCMC had scrutinised the reports made to its hotline, which revealed that 80% had racial undertones while 20% were about religion.

He informed lawmakers that the police had also set up a PDRM-MCMC Cyber Crime Committee to better coordinate investigations against cybercrimes.

Besides investigating cybercrimes such as computer hacking, online scams and gambling, he said the committee also coordinated swifter response to sensitive 3R postings.

The MCMC hotline allows the public to report any incident or content that touches on race, religion and royalty via WhatsApp (016-220 6262).

Complainants can also send an email to [email protected], together with screenshots and URL links of the offensive posts.

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