Meta Platforms's Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have signed up to Indonesia's new licencing rules for tech firms, government records showed on Tuesday (Jul 19), a day ahead of a deadline to comply or risk being blocked.
The registration is required under rules released in late
2020 that would give authorities broad powers to compel platforms to disclose
data of certain users and take down content deemed unlawful, or that
"disturbs public order" within 4 hours if urgent, and 24 hours if
not.
Communication ministry records on foreign providers showed
Meta's units had signed up on Tuesday, but Twitter was not among those that had
registered.
Of Alphabet's units, which include YouTube and Google, only
Google's cloud services had registered as of Tuesday, according to Semuel
Abrijani Pangerapan, a senior ministry official.
Google, Twitter and Facebook did not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
With a young, tech-savvy population of 270 million,
Indonesia is a top-10 market in terms of user numbers for a host of social
media companies, including Twitter, Facebook and Bytedance's TikTok.
TikTok had already registered, as had streaming services
Netflix, and Spotify, the records showed.
Semuel said non-compliant firms would lose out in the long
run and would be reprimanded, fined, then eventually blocked in Indonesia.
However, he added that platforms would get an opportunity to
reverse that, should they subsequently decide to register.
"If they don't sign up, it's their loss. That means
they don't see Indonesia as their market potential," he told a media
briefing.