Just last week, the Indonesian government announced that they would be clamping down on apps that had emojis or stickers that contained homosexual content. An unsurprising move given the country’s religious beliefs. However it looks like the government isn’t stopping there, and according to a report from the BBC, Indonesia has banned Tumblr as well.
As you might know, Tumblr plays host to a variety of content, some of which is NSFW. When Yahoo acquired the company back in 2013, they stated that they would not be doing anything to censor its NSFW content, something which the Indonesian government seems to take issue with, as the reason behind its ban is because the site hosts pornography.
According to Azhar Hasyim, the e-business director at Indonesia’s Information Ministry, he told the BBC that the move was made without any consultation with Tumblr’s parent company, Yahoo. He was quoted as saying, “We must ban the site first, and tell them later.” This isn’t the first time that Indonesia has clamped down on content, and we doubt it will be the last.
Apart from the “gay” emoji clampdown, Indonesia also blocked Netflix as they stated that they were concerned about the content that platform was offering. They also banned Vimeo and had also previously asked Twitter to create a special filter just for pornographic content. Will this ban be lifted anytime soon? It seems unlikely, so it looks like users in Indonesia will have to turn to VPNs or just make do without visiting Tumblr.