Indonesia clamps down on gambling with additional sites blocked
Following his appointment only half a year ago, Budi Arie Setiadi has overseen the blocking of almost one million forms of gambling in the country.
The Ministry of Communication and Informatics has reportedly restricted access to over 800,000 forms of online gambling content.
The Ministry, which is led by Budi Arie Setiadi and abbreviated to Kominfo, is responsible for communications, information affairs and internet censorship in Indonesia.
This is based on data from the Directorate General of Information Applications of the Ministry of Communication and Information, which reported that access to 805,923 forms of gambling content had been disabled.
This is done through IP addresses, blocking websites and even restricting payments.
Setiadi said: “This achievement is equivalent to the accumulation of online gambling content blocking that has been carried out over the previous five years.”
Following the exit of the previous Minister in May 2023, Setaidi was appointed to the position fairly soon afterward.
He explained: “Kominfo collaborates with various stakeholders in eradicating online gambling.
“We are working with the Financial Services Authority, telecommunication and internet service providers and digital platforms.”
When looking at the statistics, Kominfo restricted access to 596,348 sites and IPs, 173,134 Meta platforms, 29,257 file-sharing platform accounts, 5,993 Google and Youtube platforms, 367 X (Twitter) platforms, 170 Telegram platforms, 15 TikTok platforms, 8 App Store platforms, and 1 Snack Video platform.
More than 5,000 payment methods were also tracked and restricted too as part of the initiative.
This is due to the fact that gambling was banned in Indonesia on 6 November 1974, which restricted casinos, poker rooms, sports betting and bingo.
However, the Indonesian authorities recently announced that it would tackle the rise in online gambling, despite many sites actively accepting Indonesian registrations.
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