Indonesia Blocks Access to Tumblr

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology confirmed on Tuesday (06/03) that it has blocked access to popular microblogging site Tumblr in response to public complaints over alleged indecent content. (Image courtesy of Tumblr)

By : Sheany | on 2:28 PM March 06, 2018
Category : News, Featured

Jakarta. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology confirmed on Tuesday (06/03) that it has blocked access to popular microblogging site Tumblr in response to public complaints over alleged indecent content.

"The content complaints team has received reports from the public regarding immoral content on T*mb*r. After content inspection and analysis, we found more than 360 immoral accounts on the social media platform t*mb*r dot com and its application," the ministry tweeted.

1. Tim Aduan Konten telah menerima aduan dari masyarakat terkait konten asusila di platform T*mb*r. Setelah dilakukan penelusuran dan analisa konten, terdapat lebih dari 360 akun asusila pada medsos t*mb*r dot com dan aplikasinya.
— Kementerian Kominfo (@kemkominfo) March 6, 2018

The ministry added that the platform lacks tools to report immoral or pornographic content.

The ministry said it has notified Tumblr via email and requested it to "clean its platform of immoral content" within 48 hours.

"We have not received a response until the given deadline, so we have blocked eight of T*mb*r's DNS [Domain Name Servers] on the afternoon of Monday, March 5, 2018," the ministry said.

The ministry also issued a site-wide ban on Tumblr in February last year over pornographic content.

However, the move was quickly reversed after a massive outcry by Indonesian Tumblr users. In a statement issued on Feb. 17 last year, the ministry requested Tumblr to "self-censor" the content on its site.

This time around, Indonesian Tumblr users took to Twitter to express dismay over the government's move.

"In case you missed the news, Tumblr is blocked again in Indonesia," Twitter user Aulia Masna tweeted.

In case you missed the news, @tumblr is blocked again in Indonesia. pic.twitter.com/rDo1RwOmTZ
— Aulia Masna (@amasna) March 5, 2018

A screenshot of what users encounter when trying to access Tumblr.

Indonesia has blocked access to several social media platforms over the years, citing negative and immoral content as the basis of such moves. These include popular sites, such as video-sharing platform Vimeo and online forum Reddit.

In November last year, the ministry temporarily blocked access to a third-party service that provides Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) images and requested it to remove lewd content that was available on the platform.

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