Indonesia temporarily blocks Yahoo, PayPal, Steam and Epic Games services

The Indonesian government has temporarily blocked the online services of Yahoo, PayPal, Steam, Epic Games and some other companies. The companies would not comply with local legislation requiring them to register with the government.

According to Reuters the above companies were given until July 27 this year to register with the Indonesian government. At the end of 2020, it came up with a new law that makes it possible for local authorities to request data from users of internet platforms if they deem it necessary. Under the new law, platforms must also take content offline within four hours or 24 hours that is prohibited according to local authorities. To make all this possible, internet companies had to register with the government.

According to a user on Twitter The ban is temporary and the companies have meanwhile been contacted by the Ministry of Communications with the request to register after all. Google, Meta, Amazon have registered with the local authorities, according to Reuters. So their services are not blocked in Indonesia.

The new legislation, known in the country as Ministerial Regulation 5, was able to kick in last year criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to calculate. This organization considers government access to users’ personal data a violation of human rights. Human Rights Watch also criticized. The law constitutes according to this organization a risk to the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression. Human Rights Watch was annoyed, among other things, that the Indonesian government uses a very broad definition of prohibited content.