Considering the fact that the administration of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim came to power with a promise to protect freedom of speech, such a figure looks somewhat ironic.

According to Reuters, a record increase in government requests to block messages and accounts on Meta was recorded in the first six months of 2023 (six times more than the corresponding period last year and the highest overall since 2017, when the company began publishing reports) – the government meanwhile says , that all requests were aimed at curbing “provocative posts about race, religion and the Royal Family”.

A similar report by ByteDance on TikTok said the platform received 340 requests from the Malaysian government to remove or limit 890 accounts or posts between January and June 2023. The company removed or restricted 815 of them for violating local laws or the platform’s community rules. Again, this is the highest since the company began reporting inquiries from Malaysia in 2019.

The total number of TikTok bans in Malaysia in the first six months of 2023 was three times the number of bans in the second half of 2022. The country has submitted more requests to restrict content on TikTok than any other government in Southeast Asia.