Malaysia Says Facebook Carries 78% of Its Flagged Gambling Content

The communications minister said there should be an annual award for the platform that commits the most sins against Malaysians, and named Facebook. The number that matters is not 78. It is 30, the minutes his regulator spends on each of 470,593 takedown requests.

• Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said on 18 August that Facebook accounted for 78% of the online gambling content the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission flagged for removal between 1 January and 17 August, with YouTube at 18% and TikTok at 4%
• MCMC made 470,593 removal requests in that period and platforms complied with 93% of them, taking down 436,661 items
• Online gambling was 64% of everything flagged and scams a further 27%, so the two categories together accounted for 91% of all requests
• On scam content specifically the split was Facebook 53%, TikTok 39% and Threads 5%
• Fahmi said online fraud losses in Malaysia reached 958 million ringgit in the first half of 2026, against 2.9 billion ringgit for the whole of last year

A Minister Who Files His Own Takedown Requests

Fahmi Fadzil made the remarks in Putrajaya on 18 August, after the signing of a memorandum of understanding between MCMC and the Immigration Department of Malaysia.

"For the platform that is the most guilty, the most problematic in terms of online gambling, the most guilty is Facebook," he said. "Facebook is the most guilty, with the most use of fake accounts." He went further, suggesting there should be an annual award "for which platform commits the most sins against the people of Malaysia".

The figures behind the remark are MCMC's. Between 1 January and 17 August the regulator made 470,593 requests to platforms to remove criminal content, and platforms complied with 93%, taking down 436,661 items. Online gambling made up 64% of what was flagged and scams 27%. Within the gambling category, Facebook carried 78%, YouTube 18% and TikTok 4%. Within scams, Facebook carried 53%, TikTok 39% and Threads 5%.

His substantive complaint was about sequence rather than volume. "In many instances, action is only taken after reports are made by MCMC or complaints are received from the public," he said. "This delay gives space for harmful content to spread and increases the risk to society." He said he personally collects Facebook posts each morning after Subuh prayers and sends them to MCMC to be examined and taken down.

The memorandum signed that day commits MCMC and Immigration to share information and intelligence on people, communication networks and the methods behind transnational crime, alongside training for officers. Fahmi called for a whole-of-government approach on the basis that no single agency can disrupt the whole chain.

Thirty Minutes Times 470,593 Is the Number That Actually Matters

At his weekly press conference on 5 August, Fahmi gave a figure that reframes everything else here. "Each piece of content requires about 30 minutes of work by MCMC personnel," he said, describing officers spending considerable time filing documentation. Apply that to the 470,593 requests made by 17 August and the regulator has spent roughly 235,000 hours on takedown paperwork in 229 days. That is a little over 1,000 hours every single day, or the equivalent of more than 130 officers doing nothing else, in a country where the number requested has already exceeded last year's total. No regulator wins a volume war on those terms. The 93% compliance rate, usually cited as a success, is the trap: the more willingly platforms comply, the more requests are worth making, and the deeper the resourcing hole gets.

The Answer Is a Law Malaysia Has Already Passed

The remedy is not more enforcement, and the minister knows it. Under the Online Safety Act 2025, MCMC has introduced a Child Protection Code and a Risk Mitigation Code, and on 5 August Fahmi said platform operators had indicated willingness to comply but needed time to align their internal mechanisms so that identified content is removed automatically. That is the actual policy: shift the work from a regulator filing 470,593 forms to platforms detecting and removing at machine speed. Read in that light, the "most sins" remark is not really an accusation about Facebook's conduct so much as public pressure applied during an implementation window. The interesting date for operators and platforms alike is not 18 August but whenever those codes bite.

Naming One Platform Is Its Own Enforcement Instrument

There is a pattern worth noticing in how regulators are reaching illegal gambling this year, and it is that almost none of it involves reaching the operator. Denmark went to court against a telecoms company to block Polymarket at the network layer. Florida named four payment processors as defendants alongside the operators. Brazil ordered Meta to remove illegal betting ads under a new platform liability ruling. Malaysia is reaching for the same intermediary layer, using reputation where it has limited jurisdiction and a statute that has not yet taken full effect. An offshore operator has nothing to lose from a minister's disapproval. A listed platform with an advertising business does, which is precisely why the pressure is applied there.

Malaysia has not accused Facebook of anything it can currently prosecute. It has told a very large advertiser, in public, exactly how it will be described until the Online Safety Act does the work instead.