TikTok blocks MalaysiaNow videos on anti-genocide protest, lawyers' PC on police shootings
The latest restrictions raise fears of government censorship, as well as concerns over TikTok's increasingly pro-Israel filter following changes in its US operations.
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Two recent clips published by MalaysiaNow on TikTok have been found to have been removed, prompting not only fears of censorship of news that does not favour the government, but also the platform's increasingly pro-Israel bias following changes in its US ownership.
On July 6, MalaysiaNow published a six-minute report on a gathering by Greenpeace and other organisations to press the government to suspend operations of Australian firm Lynas over its deal to supply rare earths to the Pentagon, citing fears it could be used to manufacture weapons that would make Putrajaya complicit in US-Israeli war crimes.
The following day, the portal uploaded a clip of a press conference by lawyers representing three youths gunned down by police, in which shocking post-mortem details were revealed pointing to a possible "execution-style" killing.
Both clips have been shadow banned, meaning they were quietly blocked by TikTok. However, they are still available on YouTube and other popular platforms.
Watch on YouTube:
- Bantah Malaysia terpalit jenayah perang AS-Israel
- It is not immediately clear what prompted the platform to remove the content, as no reason was given.
It is the third MalaysiaNow video so far this year to be removed by TikTok without any explanation.
On Feb 13, a four-and-a-half-minute Malay-language video titled "Bloomberg bongkar Azam Baki dan mafia korporat", which reports on Bloomberg's damning exposés on the then chief of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), was removed by TikTok.
In March, a six-minute video showing opposition parties Muda and Pejuang announcing a campaign calling for Azam's arrest also disappeared from TikTok.
The series of restrictions comes in the wake of a controversial licensing law that came into effect this year, under which TikTok is one of only few platforms that agreed to abide by Putrajaya's censorship rules.
The same videos are still available on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which have frequently refused to comply with Malaysian government requests to take down content critical of ruling politicians.
The removal of the video coverage of the July 6 protest, where activists shouted slogans against Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, could also point to increasing censorship of pro-Palestine content following the takeover of TikTok's US operations last year.
Under a US$14 billion deal brokered by President Donald Trump, TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance was forced to spin off its American arm into a separate entity controlled by a consortium of pro-Israeli billionaires in the US alongside a fund run by Abu Dhabi's ruling family.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim acknowledged Malaysia's poor rating in the latest annual World Press Freedom Index, falling seven places from 88th last year to 95th.
Anwar, however, blamed social media platforms for the removal of content.
"This is not done by the government," he told the Dewan Rakyat yesterday. "When I made statements relating to Hamas and its supporters, the content was removed."
Shortly after coming to power in November 2022, Anwar's government threatened TikTok, unhappy over its wide use by opposition supporters, especially during the general election campaign that year.
In 2024, Putrajaya admitted to making requests through the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) for platform providers like TikTok to delete certain videos.
In August 2023, TikTok removed a video posted by MalaysiaNow summarising an article on the Ambalat oil block off the coast of Sabah – the subject of a longstanding territorial dispute between Malaysia and Indonesia.
According to TikTok, the video was removed due to issues with "integrity and authenticity". No other reasons were given.
In the same year, Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil, who oversees MCMC, came under fire from journalists and rights groups after MalaysiaNow's website was blocked for 48 hours.