Obscene content sharing makes up majority of complaints received by MCMC - Teo

KUALA LUMPUR - A total of 58 per cent or 1,631 of the 2,825 cases of misuse of communications services investigated by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) from 2009 to yesterday were for the offence of sharing obscene content, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.

Deputy Communications and Digital Minister Teo Nie Ching said there were also 546 cases related to disseminating offensive content, followed by inappropriate content (seven), false content (574), and threatening and lewd content (74).

"A total of 108 cases are still under investigation, 115 cases have been prosecuted, 40 cases were compounded with fines totalling RM138,250 and 84 cases were given a warning.

"All the cases were investigated under Section 233 (1) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (Act 588),” she said when replying to a question by Syahredzan Johan (PH-Bangi).

Teo said out of the total number of complaints received, 2,478 cases were classified as No Further Action (NFA) and/or No Offence Disclosed (NOD) because there was no solid evidence linking the suspects to the offence investigated under this section.

Teo said of the 115 cases prosecuted in court, 105 cases had been disposed of and seven were still under trial.

Responding to a supplementary question from Muhammad Ismi Mat Taib (PN-Parit), she said that social media platform providers also set up filters to ensure that content with such elements was not uploaded.

"We will also liaise with the platform providers to ensure that the content is deleted. We are also working with telecommunications companies to ensure that content of a dubious nature is not sent," she said.

She added that 518 million dubious short messaging service messages were blocked for the period 2021 to 2022 because they were not only obscene but also contained other elements such as fraud.

"We have blocked many more phone numbers because we suspect they have been abused," she said. - BERNAMA