Malaysia’s proposal to bar under-16s from social media as early as July is not just a child-safety story. For marketers, it is an early signal that the era of frictionless, anonymous reach is coming to an end. Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching has confirmed that the policy is now
For years, social media platforms have defended themselves with a familiar line: we don’t create the content; we merely host it. That argument may finally be wearing thin. This week’s landmark trial in California does not put TikTok dances, Instagram selfies, or YouTube videos in the dock. Instead, it puts
Few product names would survive a brand safety meeting with their shock value intact. Fewer still would top app charts. Yet in China, an app bluntly translated as “Are You Dead?” has done precisely that—climbing paid download rankings and igniting nationwide conversation. For marketers, this is less a novelty story
For years, social media influencing in Malaysia has lived in a grey zone—commercially powerful, culturally visible, but fiscally ambiguous. That ambiguity is now over. With the Inland Revenue Board’s latest guidance, influencing is no longer a side hustle or lifestyle choice in the eyes of the taxman. It is a
For years, conversational AI sat outside the advertising economy — helpful, neutral, and commercially silent. That wall is now beginning to crack. OpenAI has confirmed it will begin testing advertising placements within ChatGPT, marking a pivotal moment not just for the platform, but for how brands may eventually show up
TikTok has been named FIFA’s “Preferred Platform” for the FIFA World Cup 2026, marking the first time a social media platform has been given this designation for the world’s biggest sporting event. The partnership positions TikTok as a central destination for behind-the-scenes access, creator-led storytelling, and monetised match-adjacent content across
Malaysia is edging closer to a regulatory line many markets have debated but hesitated to draw. By mid-2026, the government wants all major social media platforms to cooperate in restricting access for users under the age of 16. The signal from Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil is unambiguous: this is no
Malaysia has temporarily blocked access to Grok AI, effective 11 January 2026, following concerns over the misuse of the artificial intelligence tool to generate harmful and illegal content. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said the move was taken after repeated instances of Grok being used to produce obscene,
Stagwell has introduced a new platform called The Machine, describing it as marketing’s first agentic operating system. The ambition is not to replace the tools marketers already live in, but to make those tools behave like one connected system, so work does not keep resetting every time a new campaign starts. In
For years, marketers were told that artificial intelligence would unlock efficiency, creativity and scale. What few were warned about was this: when AI slips, brands — not algorithms — take the reputational hit. That reality landed hard this week as Malaysia, France and India simultaneously moved against Elon Musk’s Grok
