Due to their inability to adhere to license requirements, Indonesia has blocked the search engine Yahoo, the payments company PayPal, and other gaming websites, an official claimed on Saturday, setting up a social media outcry.
Regulations that went into effect in late November 2020 mandated registration and gave authorities extensive authority to request platforms to hand over user data and remove information deemed illegal or that “disturbs public order” within four hours if necessary and 24 hours if not.
The deadline, which had been postponed to Friday, prompted a rush of registrations from tech giants like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and Amazon.com Inc.
Yahoo, PayPal, and gaming portals like Steam, Dota2, Counter-Strike, and EpicGames, among others, have been blocked, according to Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, a senior official at Indonesia’s Communications Ministry.
Requests for comment from PayPal, Yahoo’s parent company Apollo Global Management, and American game producer Valve Corporation—which creates Steam, Dota, and Counter-Strike—did not receive responses right away. No one at EpicGames was available for comment.
On Indonesian Twitter, hashtags like “BlokirKominfo” (block the Ministry of Communication), “Epic Games,” and “PayPal” were popular. Many users posted messages criticizing the government’s action as harming Indonesia’s online gaming business and independent contractors who utilize PayPal.
According to Pangerapan, the government will come up with a solution so that consumers can withdraw their PayPal deposits. This solution might entail temporarily restarting PayPal’s website.
He defended the action as a measure of security for Indonesian internet users by saying that authorities would unblock the websites if they complied with registration requirements.
The Southeast Asian country is a big market for a variety of tech platforms with an estimated 191 million internet users and a young, social media aware populace.
