Ensuring online safety while protecting free speech is a key challenge for countries worldwide, including Malaysia, Australia, the UK and Canada, says a legal expert.
KUALA LUMPUR: Ensuring online safety while safeguarding freedom of expression remains a key challenge for countries worldwide, including Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, said Deputy Director-General (Law Reform) at the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk G. Thiyagu.
He said striking this balance was crucial when developing laws governing social media platforms, such as the Online Safety Act 2025 (ONSA), as online safety issues were closely linked to fundamental rights.
Speaking during a dialogue session titled ‘Online Safety by Design: Platform Accountability and Child Protection in an Age of User Vulnerability’ at the International Regulatory Conference (IRC) 2026 here today, he said the principle of proportionality is central to ensuring regulations do not unnecessarily restrict freedom of expression.
“ONSA adopts a system-based approach. We have specific provisions that impose obligations on platform providers, placing a duty on them to ensure their platforms are safe,” he said during the session moderated by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) Deputy Managing Director (Development) Eneng Faridah Iskandar.
Thiyagu said freedom of speech was a key consideration during the drafting of the legislation, in line with Article 10 of the Federal Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to freedom of speech while recognising that such freedom is not absolute.
He said, however, restrictions could be imposed on grounds such as public order, morality and national security.
Thiyagu also noted that improvements could be introduced in future phases of the legislation, including refining terminology, strengthening content duration measures, adopting more system-based approaches and introducing various forms of mitigation.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) Children’s Commissioner Dr Farah Nini Dusuki said the main challenge in ensuring children’s online safety is not a lack of laws, but rather their effective implementation and enforcement.
She said Malaysia already has comprehensive legislation protecting children’s rights, but stronger oversight mechanisms are needed to monitor implementation, review shortcomings and improve the laws over time.
Farah Nini stressed that online safety should adopt a preventive rather than reactive approach, comparing it to building safer roads and playgrounds instead of expecting children to protect themselves from hazards.
“Likewise, the online environment has to be like that. As much as we want to ensure our physical environment is fit for everyone, particularly children, we also must ensure our online environment is equally safe,” she said, adding that the success of the ONSA would ultimately depend on the effective enforcement of its supporting regulations to provide meaningful protection for children.
Tune Talk co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Gurtaj Singh Padda said Malaysia is emerging as a global leader in online safety by moving beyond regulation to empower parents and strengthen platform accountability.
He said enforcement should focus on restricting access to platforms that fail to comply with the law rather than relying solely on financial penalties, as fines alone are often insufficient to change the behaviour of major social media giants.
Gurtaj Singh said Tune Talk recently became the first telecommunications company in the country to enable parents to block access to platforms such as TikTok and Facebook, while allowing them to customise age-appropriate Internet access through a one-touch system.
“The only way to teach them (platforms) is not through regulation but to cut them off. The solution is very simple: do not allow anything to appear on your platform that has not been checked,” he said.
Sharing experience from down under, Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia Danielle Heinecke said her country continued to strengthen its child and online safety framework by requiring social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent users under the age of 16 from holding accounts.
She said the legislation places responsibility on platforms to verify users’ ages through methods such as age inference, estimation and verification, with Australia recently increasing the maximum penalty for non-compliance to A$99 million (about RM284 million) for companies that fail to comply with the law.
