Edit: Created a petition about this! Sign here!

Hi everyone, just wondering, but did you recently participate in an online safety survey in Malaysia by Universiti Sains Malaysia/did you hear about one?

I recently came across some information that the Malaysian government, along with the MCMC, is making significant efforts to draft a new online safety law, also known as a "Kill Switch" law. Part of this process involves a social study conducted by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) to gather views and sentiments from various stakeholders, including regular citizens, and therefore I am wondering if you as a regular citizen (if you are) were recruited to join that study.



This study is supposed to be part of phase three of BHEUU's legislative efforts led by YB Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said, following the first part of drafting the law, which was an Enhancing Online Safety legal workshop in Desaru in August, and the second part of which was the International Legal Conference on Online Harms from September 5th-6th 2024, (which is the source of the above picture - Refer to 46:00 onwards), organized by Bahagian Hal Ehwal Undang-Undang a while ago.

The study will be followed by a debate of the legislation in parliament, during which the Malaysian government will debate the kill switch law that it has been thinking about since at least July, which follows its recent departure from the DNS Redirect policy that we managed to overcome - a policy that only was reversed because Malaysians objected against it, and also an indication that the Malaysian government was willing to push through legislation rapidly even though that legislation might profoundly affect the rights of Malaysians to use the internet freely and the matter should have been debated much more widely.

To summarize, this is what the legislative process for the Online Safety law looks like:

Phase 1: Enhancing Online Safety legal workshop in Desaru (August 2024)
Phase 2: International Legal Conference on Online Harms (September 5th - 6th, 2024)
Phase 3: USM study on online harms that is supposed to reach the Rakyat
Phase 4: Parliamentary debate (October 2024)

Since this survey is allegedly crucial in shaping the upcoming online safety laws, I am wondering how many of you have actually seen this survey since I personally haven't, and I also note that the Malaysian government has barely given one month between Phase 2 and Phase 4 and so I seriously question whether many people have actually been involved in such a survey to seek out their attitudes and perspectives, noting that in the very same conference, a Dr. Taylor Owen mentioned that the corresponding Canadian process had taken four years to secure trust and buy-in from the Rakyat.

As such, I'm curious if any of you have been involved or received any kind of survey from USM on this matter. If so, what kind of questions were asked? Just wondering, since this is Lowyat.net and the thought is that some of you may have heard about such an initiative or at least some of you may have become research subjects in this survey, given that Low Yat can be taken as representative to a degree of the Malaysian internet and some of you may be part of a community that was actually surveyed by USM and the government in seeking your perspectives on this upcoming policy.

It would be interesting to hear how inclusive this process has been and whether they've actively sought out input from a broad range of people, or they are just trying to rapidly push this through without adequately consulting the Rakyat.

Thanks!

This post has been edited by Exoflare: Sep 18 2024, 10:44 PM

If you haven’t seen such a survey, please vote “no” - it will help me understand how many people haven’t actually been exposed to the Government’s legislative effort despite its claims that it wants to involve the Rakyat.

Yeah, I suspect that this is what’s happening.

If however there is at least one person who can tell us about an existing engagement with USM or a call for a survey, I would suspect that they’d at least be able to talk about it or maybe be willing to share…?

Note moreover that the timeline for the Phase 3 is less than one month unless it takes place concurrently and overlaps with Phase 4, but even then there would be an intolerably short amount of time for Parliament’s leaders to be informed.

Same here.

I don’t know about that being generally true, but at least this time I think it’s unlikely that they actually did engage and even if they did I think it’s unlikely that it is very comprehensive.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

There is actually a bit more nuance to this and interestingly, a scenario whereby the government could potentially be seen as a hero even as it moves in the direction of being viewed as an authoritarian state in a bumbling fashion - If what it actually wants to do is to convey strength and the idea that it won't mess around with people who go against it, then it should not put up a front and say that it wants to support freedom of speech. Rather, it should go all the way, and all lines of communication should be consistent.

On the other hand, if it does want to engage the Malaysian public, then it should actually do so rather than lying about that. Although that's not an accusation that that is what the government is doing.

Based on the statistics and facts at the ILCOH, one of the things that the government wants to accomplish is to have mega-platforms be responsible for crimes that have been committed on their platforms and to prevent them from undertaking surveillance capitalism without accountability.

There was a lot that was discussed during the conference about SLAs for the kinds of content that social media platforms were obligated to remove within certain timeframes.

For example, Canada maintains that child sexual abuse or exploitation must be removed within 24 hours, knowing that it may restrict freedom of speech in some cases because of the egregious nature of the content, while it explicitly indicates that it will not restrict other kinds of content, as an explicit nod to the importance of freedom of speech.

Also, there was quite a lot of discussion about algorithmic bias and how it ends up shaping realities in the modern age, and by extension, polarizing or breaking our shared narratives in the world. At the same time, a lot was discussed also about how social media platforms are the entities that are performing surveillance capitalism and have an incentive to make profit by having us stay on their platforms for longer periods of time.

In that sense, the government could be seen to be fighting against authoritarianism from a non-governmental entity.

However, I do feel that it is disingenuous about engagement and that this will derail its plans. If the government is going to engage the Malaysian public about this, then it needs to do so much more genuinely.

This is why I created the petition and also the petition thread.

I'm sure that there's a lot more to think about as well.

Update: sought views from Doctorate Support Group, a mass community with 109.3k members - nobody has heard of the survey. Pretty sure the government is performing this policy action in bad faith at the moment unfortunately…


This post has been edited by Exoflare: Sep 21 2024, 07:50 PM

There is a bit of that at the moment, and I think that there is definitely an effort to integrate MCMC and the PDRM more tightly based on what I saw at ILCOH.

The thing about ‘kill switch’ is that it can be interpreted in multiple ways, and it doesn't necessarily entail a unilateral shutdown from the government of social media platforms or of any form of content that they decide should be removed.

In fact, YB Azalina had hinted that it could also be something that is user-driven along the way.

Having said that, I am in zero doubt that people will think that if this goes ahead in the present situation that it will be the oppressive government destruction of freedom of speech case which every single one of us fears as the worst-case scenario.

It is not helping that BHEUU is not engaging on this front, and I hope that that changes sooner than later.

No, it is not clear that that is the case and it’s unclear how the Madani government would kill off social media and there is no indication that it wants to do so.

It will remain unclear until the government is forthcoming in its negotiations and genuinely engages the public. Until then all we will have is this doubt and buruk sangka about the government - which once again is a shame, because I consider it a generational opportunity to reshape the people’s perception of the Madani government.

Throwback lol. Looks like it's still the case that nobody actually received any petitions about the online safety law, even as it's been voted on by MPs and awaits confirmation by the Senate and YDPA.