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Disruptions loom as deadline for digital platform registry closes
Twitter Inc’s widely popular social media platform was the first to be registered on deadline day, evading a potentially massive disruption if the government blocked public access to its services in Indonesia.
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A man passes by a Google sign at the company’s stand during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21, 2020. (AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
T
he deadline has passed for tech companies to sign up to a licensing regime that offers the government sweeping cyber-surveillance powers over them, leaving some widely used digital service operators to face potential disruption.
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 one of the first to be registered on deadline day, evading a potentially massive disruption if the government had to block public access to its services over non-compliance – just a week after it experienced a major 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.
