The Communications and Information Ministry is requiring domestic and foreign private electronic services providers (ESPs) to register all services available in the country by Wednesday night or face imminent blocking, pursuant to Ministerial Regulation No. 5/2020 on private ESPs. The deadline had been extended once in 2021.

The rule is part of a set of implementing regulations under the 2008 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law, which grants the state sweeping censorship powers and has been misused to silence government critics.

Twitter Inc’s wildly popular social media platform was the first to be registered on deadline day, evading a potentially massive disruption if the government had to block public access to its services in Indonesia over non-compliance – just a week after it experienced a massive global outage.

In a statement to The Jakarta Post on Wednesday, Twitter said it had “taken appropriate steps” to comply with the registration requirements, and that its commitment to the Indonesian market and encouraging healthy behavior on its services “remains unchanged”.

“We look forward to working together with [the ministry] and our non-profit partners in Indonesia towards the shared goal of making the Internet a safe, free and holistic experience,” the company said in an emailed response.

Indonesia is among the top five countries with the largest number of Twitter users globally, with a total of 18.45 million users, just under the United States, Japan, India and Brazil, according to a report from the German-based consumer data company Statista, released in January.

US tech giant Meta Platforms Inc. had already registered its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp services in the licensing system, as have Netflix Inc., Spotify Technology SA and China’s ByteDance Ltd.-owned TikTok.

Zoom Video Communications Inc., which has been used to facilitate remote working and online learning throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, also registered on Wednesday.

As of Wednesday evening, more than 7,700 domestic and 152 foreign private ESPs have been registered in the ministry’s system.

However, several other foreign digital services operators familiar to Indonesian users, such as VIU International Ltd, a Hong Kong-based video streaming service famous among South Korean cinema lovers, as well as The Walt Disney Company’s Disney+ Hotstar Indonesia, the family entertainment giant’s video streamer, have not been recorded in the system as of the time of printing.

More prominently, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which hosts a wide gamut of digital services, from video sharing platform Youtube and navigation tool Google Maps to the Android mobile smartphone ecosystem, has yet to make the list with only hours to spare. Google told the Post on Tuesday it would comply with the rules, and the ministry has said that its cloud services business had signed up.

Pratama Persadha, chairman of the Communication and Information System Security Research Center (CISSReC), said that while he supported taking firm action against market-dominating digital operators, he believed the state should take a different approach with regard to Google, given the potential massive risk to the disruption of daily life due to the ubiquity of its services in Indonesia.

“From Google’s point of view, they feel bigger and will be defended by most people who use their services,” he said.

Communications and Information Minister Johnny G Plate still urged companies to register before authorities start meting out punishment.

“It will apply to private digital service providers that intentionally refuse to follow the rules in Indonesia, or those that remain unregistered or are not yet legal,” he told the Post in a WhatsApp message on Wednesday.

The minister added, however, that the ministry would still assist digital operators that were experiencing difficulties in signing up.

Johnny did not provide details of when he would start blocking non-compliant ESPs. However, a consultation period runs until July 26, according to the prevailing rules.

A senior official previously said that the ministry would do an audit of the applicant data on Thursday, which would become the basis for imposing penalties.