I

ndonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, has a serious fake news problem.

In recent months, the government has been waging war against what many now call “the cancer of democracy,” with the police threatening to prosecute those who spread false information.

But the law enforcement approach, critics say, has proven to be futile at best and a danger to civil liberties at worst.

The government has therefore turned to social media companies to find a cure for the problem.

Early next month, government officials will meet representatives from Facebook to find ways to combat fake news.

Facebook is the most popular social media network in Indonesia with more than 70 million users as of October 2016, followed by Instagram with 19.9 million users and Twitter with 14.5 million users.

“Fake news circulating on social media for a day has a huge impact. The faster we can address the problem of false information, the better,” Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara told The Jakarta Post recently.

The minister said he wondered if Facebook could do in Indonesia what it had been doing in the United States since being heavily criticized for allowing fake news to allegedly sway voters in the US presidential election.

The company has taken the initiative to curb the spread of fake news by partnering with third-party fact-checkers and news organizations such as PolitiFact and The Associated Press to identify real news reports from made-up stories that play into existing biases, opinions and preconceived notions that people may harbor.

Facebook users can easily report fake news when they see it and after enough people report a story as fake, Facebook will pass it on to fact-checkers who will then verify whether the news is fake or not. Stories that fail the fact-checking process will be publicly flagged as “disputed” and users can click on the link to learn the reason why.

“I am actually fond of the idea that fact-checkers cooperate with journalists. The latter are at the forefront of news-making,” Rudiantara said.

Facebook has declined to respond to the Post’s questions about the planned meeting with Indonesian officials.

The Press Council, however, thought it was probably a bad idea to ask Indonesian journalists to fact-check online fake news stories.

“If we mobilize resources from journalists and mass media to watch over social media, more important journalism will be neglected,” council chief Yosep “Stanley” Adi Prasetyo told the Post.

Damar Juniarto, the regional coordinator for the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, advised the government to deepen ties with existing independent press rights organizations who had volunteered to fact-check dubious information circulating on the internet.

“The government should involve the Indonesian Anti-Hoax Society as fact-checkers so journalists can focus on doing professional journalism as well as verifying information,” Damar said.

“Facebook could also conduct data-sharing with [crowdsourcing-based app] Turn Back Hoax. The latter has a feature that enables its users to check whether a news story is false information or not.”

Anti-Hoax Society and Masyarakat Anti-Fitnah Indonesia chairman Septiaji Eko Nugroho said his community was willing to cooperate with the government or other parties to work as fact checkers as long as this process did not attenuate their independence.

“If we cooperate with the government, we could gain more sources to clarify the news,” Septiaji told the Post.

Septiaji said he would also soon meet with Facebook’s policy advisor in Jakarta to discuss how to combat fake news.