T

he Communications and Information Ministry has warned WhatsApp that it will ban the popular messaging service in the country if it refuses to remove lewd GIF images from its platform.

Messages went viral on social media on Sunday, drawing attention to the presence of such animated images on the Whatsapp platform. This has prompted concerns, mainly from members of the public, who fear that those pornographic images could be viewed by children.

The ministry reacted quickly and said in a press conference on Monday that WhatsApp could end up with a fate similar to mobile messaging Telegram, which saw its web service temporarily banned in July over allegations of terrorist content.

“WhatsApp cannot escape its responsibility. It should clean or block [the images],” the ministry’s information application director general, Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan, said.

“If not, we will [enforce the ban just as we did with] Telegram,” Samuel said, adding that WhatsApp now had 24 hours to respond to a warning letter his office sent on Sunday.

The GIF images in question are part of hundreds of animated pictures, arranged based on themes, which users can use when chatting to add color or visual jokes to their messages.

The ministry has also phoned Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, regarding the matter, but the latter said the images were supplied by third party services, according to Samuel.

“We do not want to stop with that response,” Samuel said. “Many Indonesians protested about the negative content.”

WhatsApp said in a statement that the company was “not able” to monitor content on its platform, including content supplied by third parties, such as the GIF images, since they are encrypted.

“In Indonesia, WhatsApp lets people search for GIF’s using third-party providers. We are not able to monitor GIFs on WhatsApp, since content is end-to-end encrypted,” WhatsApp said in a statement obtained by The Jakarta Post. “We’ve directed the Indonesian government to work with these third-party providers to review their content.”

The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) immediately pushed the government to ensure that WhatsApp blocks such animated images containing pornography.

“The YLKI received many complaints from consumers regarding the existence of pornographic content found on WhatsApp,” YLKI chairman Tulus Abadi said in a statement.

“This is surely not positive content for children and teenagers,” Tulus added.

The ministry has in fact tried to remove the images without the help of WhatsApp, by blocking access to at least six servers of Tenor, the company providing the GIF images to WhatsApp. However, the effort failed because the images have been integrated into the WhatsApp platform, the ministry said.