Malaysia Considers Social Media Ban for Minors

Malaysia might join the ranks of countries banning social media for minors.

According to TechCrunch, the country's communication minister has reportedly said the administration is considering systems that could enforce the restricting of children under 16 from sites like Facebook and X.

Australia led the way in implementing such a law, and France, Denmark, Italy, and Norway are considering joining. Twenty-four US states have already enacted some type of age verification law. Perhaps most notably - and most disastrously - has been the UK's Online Safety Act, which came dangerously close to banning end-to-end encryption.

Age verification schemes often do more harm than good, as noted in the case of the Online Safety Act which has been directly responsible for a data breach at Discord which leaked user IDs and the closing down of multiple online communities. In m and the spike in downloads of free VPNs. They are also largely ineffective, pushing users away from existing, reputable platforms toward less regulated or potentially sketchy sites and services that may not protect user data (or, in the case of adult sites specifically, may not moderate out content such as CSAM or "revenge porn").

While we at Privacy Guides acknowledge that the internet can be a dangerous place in some ways, we believe that existing solutions are too easy to bypass and don't do enough to protect user privacy or free speech, while also ignoring the fact that many of the harms of the platforms being age gated also impact adult users.