Jakarta. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has teamed up with social media platform Twitter to combat the circulation of fake news.

The ministry's director general for IT applications, Samuel A. Pangerapan, said that Twitter will help to improve Indonesia's digital literacy and response to complaints and reports on problematic content.

"The ministry and Twitter share the same concern over fake news, terrorist activities, offensive content and rude behavior," Samuel said on Monday (20/02).

"Twitter said it will cooperate with the ministry to improve digital literacy to overcome these problems," he said, adding that special standards will be established to define together what kind of content should be considered offensive.

"We have laws and standards, and so do they [Twitter]. What we consider a violation, might not be [a violation] for them," he said.

Samuel also encouraged high-profile Twitter users to have their accounts verified.

"Verification of government-owned accounts will be done collectively; the ministry has a list of accounts of other [governmental institutions," he said.

The social media platform is in the process of verifying the accounts to help users share reliable information.