Indonesia summons Meta, TikTok over curbing of disinformation
Platforms face penalties for failing to remove harmful content
Such content has sparked protests, deep fakes targeting official
JAKARTA, Aug 27 (Reuters) – Indonesia has summoned representatives of Meta Platforms Inc, ByteDance’s TikTok and other social media platforms, ordering them to boost content moderation as disinformation has spread online, a government official said on Wednesday.
Such disinformation, particularly on TikTok and Meta’s Instagram, has stoked anger and spurred protests against the government, deputy communications minister, Angga Raka Prabowo, told Reuters.
The government will urge the platforms to moderate or remove such content, as well as anything pertaining to pornography and online gambling, without waiting for a government request, Angga said.
“They must comply with the rules because our goal is to protect this country. Penalties in the rules are reprimands, fines, temporary suspension, revoking of access or even kicking them out from a list of registered electronic platforms,” he said.
“The impact (of disinformation) is chaos… And people do not receive accurate and complete information.”
Separate meetings with TikTok and Meta have been scheduled for later this week and the government will also send an invitation to Elon Musk’s X and YouTube Indonesia, he said.
The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
TikTok and Instagram each have more than 100 million accounts based in Indonesia, some of the biggest in the world.
Examples of disinformation included a deep fake video of Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati saying teachers were a burden on the country, Angga said.
Some content has mislabelled past footage of riots in Jakarta as being recent, he said, referring to Monday’s demonstration when hundreds clashed with police and were arrested, some of them under 18 years old, as they protested against excessive pay and perks for members of parliament.
The Child Protection Commission reported that some of the detained youth had joined the protest after watching TikTok videos calling for demonstrations, Angga said. (Reporting by Ananda Teresia; Additional reporting by Stefanno Sulaiman; Editing by Gayatri Suroyo and Bernadette Baum)
