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Sam Beltran

Calls are growing for Asean to collectively crack down on Big Tech platforms that spread scams and harmful content, spurred on by Meta Platforms’ landmark US$18 billion US settlement last week.
Meta agreed on Wednesday to enact sweeping changes to Instagram and Facebook – including default time limits and content restrictions – as part of the settlement with several US states, which had alleged the platforms damaged children’s mental health.
Within hours of the deal being announced, advocacy group Scam Watch Pilipinas was urging the Philippines, as this year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to put platform accountability squarely on the bloc’s agenda.
“For too long, countries like the Philippines have been dealing with the world’s biggest technology companies individually,” said Jocel de Guzman, co-founder of the group, in a statement.
Because an individual nation state’s enforcement reach was limited, cooperation on removing scam ads, fake accounts and harmful content often came down to “the willingness of the platform”, he added, further calling for an Asean Big Tech accountability framework to be introduced.

Analysts who spoke to This Week in Asia said the US settlement strengthened the case for Southeast Asian governments to demand comparable safeguards, though they cautioned it was not a template the region could simply copy wholesale.
Still, it “most certainly helped the Philippines get agreement from Meta on the safety protocols that were requested” last week, said Asha Hemrajani, a technology policy expert and senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, referring to commitments extracted from Meta and Roblox executives in Singapore.
These included age verification, parental controls, faster takedowns and closer cooperation with law enforcement, according to Manila’s Information and Communications Technology Secretary Henry Aguda.
Those talks followed a school shooting in the southern port city of Zamboanga on August 18 that officials said was live-streamed. It was the second fatal school shooting in under two months.

While Hemrajani said the effectiveness of Meta’s new safety protocols “remains to be seen”, she called the latest developments “a turning point” that were likely to spur other governments into demanding change.
Elina Noor, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Meta settlement showed “there is more to be done in holding Big Tech accountable for a range of harms”, affecting children in particular.
But she said the picture was complicated by the fact that many of the same companies being pressed to pay billions in damages were also providing technical expertise and underwriting capacity-building efforts to help the region fight scams.
Yesterday’s rules
Asean’s existing digital cooperation mechanisms were not built around platform accountability, focusing instead on phone calls and SMS.
The bloc’s current guidelines “expressly exclude scams conducted through social media and OTT services such as WhatsApp”, said Alejandro Reyes, chief strategic officer of non-profit organisation AI Safety Asia, referring to services delivered directly to users over the internet.
“Yet much of the problem has shifted onto precisely those platforms,” he told This Week in Asia.
As an example, Reyes pointed to Singapore, where social media accounted for roughly 30 per cent of scam cases last year, with messaging apps responsible for another 23 per cent.

Digital governance analyst Hafizh Nabiyyin said Asean leaned too heavily on scam prevention and non-binding guidance, such as public education campaigns or knowledge-sharing exercises, rather than holding platforms to account.
This was a function of the bloc’s non-interference principle, consensus-based decision-making approach and tendency to take “a middle-ground position”, he said.
Even if it expanded its guidelines to cover platform accountability more explicitly, “they would just be guidelines and not regulations or legislation”, Hemrajani said.
Asean was not the European Union and it could not feasibly introduce comparable legally binding rules for Big Tech companies, she added.
‘Coalition of the willing’
If bloc-wide legislation is seemingly off the table, then what can Asean do?
Existing regional frameworks set baseline measures, backed by information sharing and joint investigations, for individual members to adopt.
Asean’s Guideline for Digital Platform Regulation, for instance, recommends that member states verify the identity of all online sellers on digital platforms.
When Taiwan adopted a similar measure, it saw scam advertisements drop sharply as a result, said David Lam, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, digital economy and technology policy.
“As effective as this measure is, however, Asean leaves it to member countries to individually enforce it,” Lam said.

Enforcement, not ambition, is where the region keeps stumbling. Malaysia’s social media licensing requirements – later codified under its Online Safety Act – were largely ignored or rejected by social media companies when first introduced.
Meta had also reportedly ignored Philippine requests to take down deepfake videos of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr used to promote an investment scam, Lam said.
Collective bargaining power against Big Tech platforms could be consolidated via an Asean-wide framework, Noor argued, enabling the bloc to take on companies “whose market valuation and even annual revenue rival Southeast Asian economies”.
But she said the obstacles to enforcement were numerous. Not only are these the same companies that underpin much of the region’s digital economic growth, member states also have differing exposure to online harm and uneven levels of digital maturity.
On top of that is the ever-present risk of US trade retaliation against governments seen as targeting American tech firms unfairly.


Yet at least a subset of Asean member states clearly wanted tougher Big Tech regulation, Lam said, driven by the twin pressures of scams and child safety.
He pointed to Project Nexus – a regional instant-payments system built by a founding group of countries around binding operation standards, with the door left open for others to join later – as a template for how a “coalition of the willing” might operate on platform accountability too.
Reyes said pushing platform accountability up the Asean agenda would fit “naturally with Manila’s stated priorities on digital transformation and protecting vulnerable groups”.
But as chair, the Philippines is merely a convenor.
“The chair cannot impose a regional regulatory regime,” he said. “There is no Asean equivalent of an EU legislature and regulator imposing and enforcing a single platform law across the region.”
A more realistic ambition, Reyes said, would be establishing a “common regional floor” of shared minimum standards on scam advertising, account verification, fraud reporting, evidence preservation, child safety and cooperation with law enforcement.
“If the Philippines wants to lead this at Asean, the question is not only what regional framework it can broker, but what enforceable obligations it is prepared to put in place at home,” he said.


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Asean

Asean urged to take on Big Tech after Meta’s record payout

Apps owned by Meta Platforms include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Photo: Dreamstime/TNS

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks on during a US Senate hearing into Big Tech and the “Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis” in 2024. Photo: AFP

Police gather at a school in Zamboanga, the Philippines, following a school shooting on August 18. Photo: AFP

European Union flags fly in front of the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels. Asean lacks the ability to introduce EU-style, legally binding rules. Photo: Getty Images/TNS/AFP

Some Asean member states have been pushing for tougher Big Tech regulation, analysts say, driven by the twin pressures of scams and child safety. Photo: Shutterstock

Small state, big agenda: Singapore prepares to steer Asean through crisis

Singapore’s Lawrence Wong attends an Asean meeting in 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ flag (right) seen alongside the flags of member states at a forum in Singapore in 2008. Photo: AFP

Singapore’s Lawrence Wong attends an Asean meeting in 2023, before becoming prime minister. Photo: EPA-EFE

The Asean logo is seen at the Asean Secretariat building in Jakarta, Indonesia, last year. Photo: AFP

A container ship enters port in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong province. Photo: Xinhua

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul (not pictured) reaches out to shake hands with Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing (left) after a signing ceremony in Bangkok on August 6. Photo: EPA

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan gives the opening remarks at the 25th Asean Regional Forum Retreat in Singapore in 2018. Photo: AP

Meta to pay US$18 billion and limit teen access to settle US addiction case

Olivia Konar holds a banner naming young victims of alleged social media harms outside the federal courthouse in Oakland, California. Photo: AP

Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson hugs a colleague outside court after the settlement. Photo: AP

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri taking the stand on Tuesday. Image: Vicki Behringer via Reuters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Reuters

Southeast Asian scammers’ new disguise: your leader’s face

Illustration: Kevin Wong

AI-generated deepfakes of Southeast Asian leaders are increasingly being used by online scam syndicates. This illustration was produced with the assistance of Google’s Nano Banana. Illustration: Greg Fountain

On criminal forums and Telegram channels, chatter about deepfakes surged 600 per cent in just one five-month period in 2024. Photo: Reuters

“Cybercrime exists wherever anyone is using a smartphone or laptop”, law enforcement officials say. Global losses hit US$10.5 trillion in 2025. Photo: Shutterstock

AI and other tech tools are increasingly being integrated into scam operations across Southeast Asia and further afield, experts say. Photo: Shutterstock

An emergency warning alert alarm on a mobile phone. Artificial intelligence has not built a new criminal underworld, it has retooled an old one – at speed. Photo: Shutterstock

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Asean cannot pass EU-style laws, but a ‘coalition of the willing’ could force Big Tech to adopt safeguards against scams and child harm


Asean cannot pass EU-style laws, but a ‘coalition of the willing’ could force Big Tech to adopt safeguards against scams and child harm.


Asean urged to take on Big Tech after Meta’s record payout

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Asean cannot pass EU-style laws, but a ‘coalition of the willing’ could force Big Tech to adopt safeguards against scams and child harm

Asean cannot pass EU-style laws, but a ‘coalition of the willing’ could force Big Tech to adopt safeguards against scams and child harm