The Malaysian Government is asking Meta and Facebook to remove all illegal gambling and fraud from the platform. The Minister of Communications of Malaysia, Fahmi Fadzil, stated that if the two companies did not cooperate, they would be forced to take legal action.
Fahmi Fadzil stressed at the cross-sectoral meeting on combating cyber-fraud that an ultimatum had been sent to Facebook to cooperate with the regulatory body, otherwise the authorities would initiate legal proceedings against it, which would be handled by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. In the view of the Malaysian authorities, cooperation between the Platform is essential if the prohibited content is to be reduced.
The data show that between 1 January 2026 and 23 May 2026, the online platform received a total of 27,1472 requests for the removal of harmful content, of which 91 per cent related to fraud and online gambling. Fahmi Fadzil stated that 81 per cent of the online lottery and 58 per cent of the online frauds came from Facebook. This huge amount of data makes Facebook a major focus of the Malaysian authorities.
On 21 January 2026, the Ministry of the Interior, in a written document, stated that in 2025 alone, the country ‘ s losses from fraud amounted to 2,777 million kyats (approximately $684.6 million), the most common cases involving telephone, marital, electronic commerce, false financing, etc. As the threat intensified, the National Bank of Malaysia stepped up its intervention and, over the past year, the Central Bank succeeded in stopping 1.2 billion kyats of related transactions.
Fahmi Fadzil stated that raising public awareness was essential to reducing the number of victims. “We need to raise people’s awareness of fraud and inform them about it. We should work together to send a clear message to the public that people should report fraud immediately.”
Over the past year, international scrutiny of the role of Meta in illegal advertising has intensified. Reuters published a report last year, citing documents from within Meta, estimated that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp might have earned $16 billion in total through fraudulent or illegal product advertising, equivalent to around 10 per cent of Meta’s 2024 collection.
