T

he use of the internet is becoming ever more omnipresent and unavoidable in the country. Even President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo acknowledges this by turning to social media platforms such as Twitter to engage with his increasingly tech-savvy citizens.

But it is YouTube that has caused the government some concern of late following a torrent of complaints over what some people see as vulgarity in the numerous videos posted by teenage social media sensation Karin Novilda.

The Communications and Information Ministry and the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) have responded to these complaints seriously by inviting Karin to a closed-door meeting.

Karin, who only recently graduated from high school, is a widely popular “Instagrammer” with 1.1 million followers on her account, @awkarin. She gained even more public attention when she turned to YouTube, creating vlogs (video blogs) that ostensibly depict her lifestyle.

Karin recently collaborated with Indonesian rapper and hip-hop artist Young Lex, also a rising YouTube sensation, on a song entitled “Bad”, which went viral and has triggered debate over the explicit message of the song: that being bad is OK.

Following the meeting, Karin agreed to delete a number of her more “indelicate” videos, acknowledging that there was content on her social media accounts that “lacked an educational message” for her 200,000 YouTube subscribers and her followers on Instagram as well.

The ministry claims it does not have the authority, or the intention, to ban Karin from running her show in the digitalsphere, but the ministry said Karin’s videos could encourage children and teenagers who watched her videos to follow her lifestyle, which some perceive as lacking in sound morals.

“The development of the internet in the country is so fast that we cannot keep up with the pace,” ministry spokesperson Noor Iza told The Jakarta Post.

The response from the KPAI is more vehement. Commission chairman Asrorun Ni’am said his organization had conducted an assessment of Karin’s videos and had come to the conclusion that her content could pose a threat to many internet users, especially children.

“We agree with complaints alleging that the videos are indelicate and violate the norms of politeness in public,” Asrorun said.

Asrorun claimed that the assessed videos could possibly violate a number of regulations, such as decency provisions in the 2008 Information and Electronic Transactions Law and the 2008 Pornography Law.

Asrorun argued that people creating content on the internet must act as if they were in real life, and in real life, there are norms of politeness to obey.