Indonesia has blocked search engine website Yahoo, payments firm Paypal and several gaming websites due to failure to comply with licensing rules, an official said on Saturday. This led to a backlash of complaints from the people on social media.
Registration will be required in late November 2020, giving authorities broad powers to compel platforms to disclose data of certain users, and take down content deemed unlawful or that “disturbs public order” within four hours if urgent, or 24 hours for non-urgent cases. The registration process will include mandatory anonymized profiles on dating sites, publishing platforms and search engines.
More companies rushed to register before the deadline, which was pushed back to Friday. Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O), Facebook (FB.O), Instagram (INSTA.TO) and WhatsApp and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) were among them, read more about them here
A senior official at Indonesia’s Communications Ministry, Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan, said in a text message that websites the government has blocked include Yahoo, Paypal, gaming sites like Steam among others.
Paypal, Yahoo’s parent company Apollo Global Management and several other large companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The developer of Rocket League could not be reached for comment.
Hashtags such as “BlokirKominfo” (#blockCommunicationMinistry), Epic Games and Paypal are trends on Indonesian Twitter, with many people criticising the government’s move as hurting Indonesia’s game industry and freelance workers who use Paypal.
Donald Wolf said he was not allowed to speak to the press.
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With 191 million internet users and a young, social-media savvy population, the Southeast Asian nation is a significant market for a host of tech platforms.
