Indonesia blocks online-blogging site Tumblr over porn
Indonesia has blocked online blogging service Tumblr over pornographic content, the government said Tuesday, in Jakarta's latest crackdown on obscenity.
The government of the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation blocked Tumblr on Monday, saying the New York-based company had not replied to its February letter demanding that pornographic content be scrubbed from the platform within 48 hours.
The ministry of technology and information said it had received multiple reports about obscene content on the microblogging and social networking website, which has about 400 million blogs on its service globally.
"After investigating, we found at least 360 Tumblr accounts contained pornographic content," ministry spokesman Noor Iza told AFP.
Tumblr could not immediately be reached for comment.
Jakarta in 2016 threatened to block Tumblr's service in the country of 260 million but did not follow through on the threat.
The ministry on Tuesday said Tumblr would be accessible again once the company complied with the government's order.
The shutdown was met with anger by some internet users.
"Those 360 accounts are less than one percent" of the total users, one said on Twitter.
"It's like burning an entire forest just to kill one worm. You might as well block Google."
Indonesia brought in a tough anti-pornography law in 2008 that criminalises any work deemed obscene.
It blocked popular video-sharing website Vimeo in 2014 after accusing it of hosting pornographic content.
Last November the government threatened to ban social network Facebook and messaging app WhatsApp unless the platforms removed obscene Graphics Interchange Format material from their services.
This year Google pulled Blued, one of the world's largest gay dating apps, from the Indonesian version of its online store in response to government demands.
© 2018 AFP
