The Government of Indonesia is tightening laws on content moderation in the country, which affects several tech giants operating in the region. Local authorities initially set a deadline for a few companies to comply with national laws, but tech giants like PayPal and cook for a couplewere blocked in providing their services on the Internet due to the fact that they did not adapt in time.

Introduced in 2020, Law MR5which is quite comprehensive and affects several companies and industries, gives the right of local government to receive data from specific users and remove content that may disturb public order or is considered illegal.

In order for foreign companies to comply with this new law, the Indonesian authorities have given them until July 27, 2022 to register in the government database and be able to continue normal operations. Some companies have already managed to register in time, for example Google and its services and popular game roblox but companies like PayPal, cook for a couple, Yahoo and some others did not register on time and were blocked in an Asian country.

List of some major blocked companies and services | Credits: Reproduction / Daniel Ahmad

According to edgein 2022 digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) gave a report that the new legislation “violates human rights”. At the beginning of the month, the group sent a document to Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information (Cominfo) requesting that “invasive content moderation rules” be lifted.

For the part of the population that has an account in PayPal, the Indonesian government has extended the service until today (31). At the same time, the authorities expect users to migrate and transfer their money to other platforms.

OUR valve was one of the most affected by the lockdown with its most popular games DOTA2 as well as Counter attack be blocked. But the company responded edge stating that he was already “working to meet Indonesia’s demands”. The rest of the companies should follow the path of the gaming platform and eventually register in the state database.

Source: Daniel Ahmadedge

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