Indonesia says 464,440 pieces of online gaming content removed since October 20

The content was blocked between October 20 and December 4.

Indonesia.- Alexander Sabar, acting general director of Digital Space Supervision at the Ministry of Communication and Digital Technology (Komdigi) has announced that between October 20 and December 4, his ministry acted against 464,440 instances of online gambling content on digital platforms.

The total comprised 428,969 website links and IP addresses, 19,250 accounts on Meta platforms, 9,842 instances on file-sharing platforms, 3,836 on Google or YouTube, 2,201 on X, 222 on Telegram and 118 on TikTok.

Sabar reported that 49,239 of the pieces of content were blocked over a five-day period from November 29 to December 4. According to Tempo, this operation targeted three Instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers that were promoting and linking to online gambling sites.

Sabar stressed the ministry’s commitment to combating online gambling in accordance with directives from president Prabowo Subianto and minister Meutya Hafid. Since 2017, Komdigi has blocked over 5.3 million instances of online gambling content.

Gambling in Indonesia is illegal for both citizens and foreigners. Several ministers are collaborating with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) to stop the use of payment and banking systems for online gambling. The government has also implemented a monitoring system using artificial intelligence to detect websites associated with online gambling.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs has met with the PPATK and mobile operators to discuss two potential actions against illegal online gambling: a public awareness campaign to communicate that gambling can cause financial difficulties and a measure to prevent people from paying for gambling via phone credits. Further technical meetings will be held to develop an implementation plan.

See also: Bank Indonesia freezes 7,500 bank accounts linked to online gambling