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View all search resultsWhen fighting disinformation risks silencing the press
In the digital age, information chaos has real-world consequences, and Indonesia is fighting it handicapped.
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Asmat tribespeople try a smartphone on June 1, 2023, in the rural district of Agats in Asmat regency, South Papua. (Antara/Aditya Pradana Putra)
A
s one of the world's largest democracies and social media markets, Indonesia faces a disinformation problem that few countries can match in scale, and remains unequipped to solve.
The events of August 2025 are not easily forgotten. Beyond the street unrest was another escalation in the public sphere, where false and misleading content spread like wildfire, public confusion turned into heightened tensions within days and this strain manifested in looting incidents across several areas.
The episode was a stark reminder that in the digital age, information chaos has real-world consequences, and Indonesia is fighting it handicapped, with gaps in media and digital literacy that create fertile ground for deceptive materials to spread, amplified by platform algorithms and met by uneven public capacity to distinguish fact from fiction.
The urgency to respond is clear. But urgency alone does not determine the right response. That requires examining what actually works, and what does not.
Comparative experience suggests that enforcement-driven approaches alone tend to chase symptoms rather than causes. Disinformation operates within an ecosystem shaped by platform incentives, algorithmic amplification, cross-border information flows and declining institutional trust.
Generative artificial intelligence has turbocharged the problem, reducing the cost and speed of producing synthetic text, audio, images and video that appear plausible. In this environment, playing whack-a-mole with content simply does not scale.
Regional and international frameworks are shifting toward systemic solutions. ASEAN's 2018 guidelines prioritize media literacy, institutional capacity and cooperation over content control.
