Lawyer Andrew Khoo said such an arbitration panel within an independent media council could also resolve disputes with transparency.
He said the onus is now on the party responsible for the post to show why it is not justified to take it down.
“Social media platforms should (also) be more open about why they take down posts and how these posts go against their community standards,” Khoo told FMT.
He was commenting on human rights lawyer Charles Hector’s call for court oversight on government requests for social media posts to be taken down.
This was in response to a TikTok revelation that the government had made 2,202 requests to remove posts and delete accounts last year.
Hector said practising censorship by deleting accounts should never happen without a court order.
“Secret censorship by regulators is unjust and unacceptable in a democratic society,” he said.
“How many ‘suspects’ responsible for these posts or accounts have been investigated, charged in court, tried and convicted for crimes?”
Hector said the government should also reveal requests to take down posts on other platforms such as Facebook, Google, WhatsApp and X.
Law lecturer Bahma Sivasubramaniam said Hector’s proposal to have the courts look into requests for takedowns might be difficult.
Bahma, who teaches at Multimedia University where she specialises in cyber law, told FMT such processes are lengthy and will unduly burden the court system which is already handling “a copious number” of cases.
“Having such requests reviewed by the court through judicial reviews or class action suits is not cheap and can be time-consuming. It is not sensible to consider this,” she added.
She suggested that legislators first determine if social media platforms are bound by the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1998 despite being domiciled in Europe and other regions beyond Malaysia.
The CMA metes out penalties to internet service providers and content application service providers for allowing offensive content to be published.
Under Section 211 of the act, posting any content considered indecent, obscene, false, menacing or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person is considered an offence.