At the start of Malaysia’s new social media licensing requirement, TikTok and WeChat have successfully obtained a licence to operate in the country. This is according to the latest update from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), which states that two platforms are now licensed as of 1 January 2025.
For those of you who have not been keeping up with the new legal framework, the country now requires all messaging and social media platforms with at least eight million users to be licensed in order to operate locally, enforceable starting from 1 January 2025. The MCMC has identified eight such platforms that will be required to apply for the licence, namely TikTok, WeChat, X, YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
The commission revealed that aside from the two applications that were successful, the licensing process is still ongoing for Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Neither X nor YouTube have applied for the licence yet, with the former claiming that it does not have eight million users in Malaysia; the MCMC is in the midst of verifying the actual number of X’s users while also figuring out the classification of YouTube under the licensing framework.
For platform operators that fail to comply with the new regulations, they can be fined up to RM500,000, jailed for up to five years, or both. The MCMC recently published an updated draft of the Code of Conduct (Best Practice) for Internet Messaging and Social Media Service Providers following a public consultation back in October, with a final version expected in the near future. Communications minister Fahmi Fadzil previously said that the government would not ban unlicensed social media platforms after the deadline.
(Source: MCMC)
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