Polemic For The Establishment Of Social Media Councils, SAFEnet Asks Kominfo To Review

Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi (foti: Doc. VOI)

JAKARTA - Some time ago, Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi said he would create a Social Media Council (DMS), which aims to monitor content on social media platforms.

Responding to the plan, Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) considers that the discussion about DMS should be carried out carefully. They also explained some concerns about the planned formation of DMS.

According to SafeNet, the plan to form DMS after the revision of the two ITE Laws is considered to have lost context. Because during the initial proposal before the revision of the two ITE Laws, SAFEnet proposed DMS as a new independent institution containing various stakeholders and functioning to replace the role of Kominfo in content moderation.

Thus, SafeNet assessed that this was actually stripped of the substance of the initial proposal so that the authority to moderate content was entirely in the hands of Kominfo as a representation of the state.

Furthermore, they also mentioned that DMS must be independent, free from the influence of the government and social media companies. According to him, Kominfo's control over DMS will cause censorship and exacerbate the destruction of democracy and civil liberties in the digital space.

"Under Kominfo, there is a potential for a very large conflict of interest, so that DMS can be used as a new digital repression tool," SAFEnet said in its official statement.

Finally, the most worrying thing is that Kominfo interprets DMS as a content supervisor on social media. SAFEnet assessed that surveillance practices cannot be justified because they can trigger censorship by companies or social media users.

Based on the considerations above, SAFEnet urges the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology to: