Malaysia says 91% of 203,918 takedown requests this year targeted gambling and scam content

Malaysia’s online safety crackdown is being driven overwhelmingly by gambling and scam-related material, after Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said 203,918 public requests for content removal were filed between January 1 and April 19, with 91 percent linked to those two categories.

Speaking after the Safe Internet Campaign programme in Pagoh on April 20, Fahmi said the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission received 203,918 requests from the public for social media platforms to remove harmful content during the first 109 days of 2026. Of that total, 61 percent related to online gambling and 30 percent to scams, underlining how strongly both categories now dominate Malaysia’s content-enforcement agenda.

The minister added that the remaining removal requests involved pornography, bullying or harassment and unauthorised services. He also said Facebook remained the main platform flagged in the two biggest categories, with 81 percent of gambling-related content and 58 percent of scam-related content identified there.

The latest figures also fit a broader enforcement trend already visible earlier this year. In March, Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching said gambling accounted for 62 percent of all MCMC takedown requests, while scam-related content made up 21 percent, and official year-on-year data showed both categories rising sharply in 2025 compared with 2024. The same report said MCMC’s actions are being carried out under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 and the Online Safety Act 2025.

Taken together, the new numbers show that Malaysia’s digital enforcement challenge is no longer spread evenly across different forms of harmful content. Online gambling and scams are now clearly the centre of gravity. For regulators, that makes the issue less about occasional moderation and more about sustained platform cooperation, public reporting and faster intervention as complaint volumes continue to climb.