Fahmi said he reminded Meta at a meeting with a team from the social media giant yesterday that the Malaysian social media licence is aimed at curbing crimes on social media, including sexual crimes against children.

“Meta needs to be much more proactive in eradicating groups on its social media platforms that lean towards such sexual crimes,” he said in a statement today.

The meeting was also attended by the ministry’s secretary-general, Fauzi Isa, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission chairman Salim Fateh Din and Meta director of public policy (Southeast Asia) Rafael Frankel.

Fahmi said the Meta team shared its views about compliance with the licence’s requirements, including the draft code of conduct and the Online Safety Act, which they have not fully perused yet.

“Our meeting revolved around preparations by all parties for the enforcement of licensing for social media platforms and Internet messaging services from Jan 1, 2025.

“This licence will be required of every platform that fulfils the criteria involved, including those that have at least eight million users in Malaysia.

“Meta has agreed to prepare a response to the draft code of conduct published on Oct 22, and will hold further discussions with MCMC early next week to examine several of its aspects in detail,” he said.

Early this month, Fahmi said MCMC had given all social media platforms two months to review the first draft of the code of conduct.

He also said the service providers had two months to register with MCMC.