Indonesia’s Communications and Information Ministry has imposed a blockade on eight digital platforms including Yahoo, Steam, Epic Games and PayPal after failing to comply with the country’s new licensing rule. Several weeks ago, the government reminded tech companies to register themselves as an Electronic Systems Provider (PSE) in Indonesia by 20th July or risk being blocked in the country.
According to The Jakarta Post, the Ministry’s Informatics Applications Director General Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan has confirmed that search engine Yahoo, gaming platform Steam and payment platform PayPal were among the eight electronic service providers that have been blocked. Other blocked platforms include Dota, Counter-Strike, Epic Games, Origin.com and Xandr.com.
At the time of writing, there are a total of 8,721 domestic platforms and 288 foreign platforms that have registered as an PSE. Other popular platforms including Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, as well as Google, YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, Twitter and Zoom were registered just in time before the blockade.
By registering as a PSE, these tech platforms have to commit to removing unlawful content or content that can disrupt public order within 24 hours if requested by Indonesian authorities. For urgent take down requests, it must be done within 4 hours. If the platform fails to comply with the order, the government can order internet service providers to block access to it.
Prior to this, some were skeptical that the government would throw the ban hammer as various international platforms were widely used in the country including government officials. However, it seems that Indonesia has managed to get big tech such as Meta, Google and Twitter to comply at the last minute. There are criticism that such regulation may pose a threat to privacy and freedom of expression on the internet. Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network’s (SAFEnet) Nenden Arum said their analysis shows that this would be the most repressive regulation of its kind in the region.
On the flip side, the new regulation allows the government greater control to moderate content especially on social media platforms hosted internationally. In Malaysia, the current legal framework is not effective in handling content uploaded on overseas platforms. As mentioned by Communications and Multimedia Minister Tan Sri Annuar Musa, if someone uploads an offending content on Facebook and Twitter, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has no power to take it down.
Social media platforms such as Facebook have been allowing misleading and scam ads targeting Malaysians on its platform and there’s virtually no action taken when users report them. There was even a misleading ad promoting a supposed diabetic supplement which gave the impression that it was endorsed by the Ministry of Health. Even after the Ministry of Health reported and making a public announcement about the misleading ad, it took Facebook days to disable it.
Interestingly, Malaysia has banned Steam in 2017 for not complying with MCMC’s request to remove a game that was deemed offensive. The ban was lifted after Steam disabled the game for Malaysian users. In most cases, such blockade are done on the ISP’s DNS level and there are several workarounds including using a VPN.
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