No need for a new act to curb racial, religious discrimination on social media

Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil brushed off the need for a new act that can serve to curb racial and religious discrimination on social media.

“There are plenty of laws that can be used to handle discrimination on social media. Among them are Sedition Act 1948, Communication and Multimedia Act 1998 and the Penal Code.

“This shows that the basic legal framework is already there and there is no need to have new act now.

“The government also tabled the Online Safety Act 2025 which was gazetted on May 22 2025 to raise and encourage online safety to monitor dangerous content and made it compulsory and obligatory for application service providers, content application service providers and network service providers.”

He pointed out that the act contains mechanisms to manage various forms of harmful online content including the ones that raises hate, seditious and divisive

He said this in a written reply to a question from V Ganabatirau (PH-Klang).

While there was no particular case mentioned, it is a well known fact that certain converted preachers have been putting up racial and religious discriminative content on their social media platforms.