An official said on Saturday that Indonesia had barred the search engine Yahoo, the payments company PayPal, and other gaming websites because they were unable to comply with the rules for obtaining licenses. This sparked an outcry on social media.
Image source: esports.gg
Regulations that went into effect at the end of November 2020 mandated registration and granted authorities extensive authority to request platforms to hand over user data and remove information that is deemed illegal or that “disturbs public order” within four hours if necessary and 24 hours if not. These regulations also required platforms to comply with authorities’ requests within 24 hours.
The deadline was postponed to Friday, which caused a rush of registrations from tech titans such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp owned by Alphabet Inc., Instagram owned by Meta Platforms Inc., and Amazon.com Inc.
In a text message, a senior official at Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications named Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan stated that several websites, including Steam, Dota2, Counter-Strike, and Epic Games, are among those that have been blocked. Other including big companies like Yahoo and PayPal have also been blocked.
In an interview with Metro TV, Pangerapan claimed that the government would find a solution for persons withdrawing their deposits from PayPal, and that the solution would be implemented as soon as possible. Choosing this alternative may, for a short period of time, restore access to the website of the payment service.
The online payment service PayPal, the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and the United States-based video game producer Valve Corporation, which is responsible for the operations of Steam, Dota, and Counter-Strike, did not react quickly to requests for comment.
On Indonesian Twitter, hashtags such as “BlokirKominfo” (block Communication Ministry) and “Epic Games” and “PayPal” were trending, and many people wrote messages criticizing the move by the government as being detrimental to Indonesia’s online gaming industry and to freelance workers who use PayPal.
A request for response was made to Pangerapan, but he did not react to the inquiry. Because it has an estimated 191 million internet users and a young population that is well-versed in social media, the country in Southeast Asia is a big market for a variety of technological platforms.
