Minister: Indonesia's child account removals surpass TikTok's efforts in Australia

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Minister of Communications and Digital (Menkomdigi) Meutya Hafid said the removal of around five million children’s accounts from digital platforms, as an implementation of the Government Regulation on the Governance of Electronic System Provision in Child Protection (PP Tunas), has surpassed the account takedown figures achieved by TikTok in Australia.

“Together with the platforms, we have taken down five million (children’s) accounts. Although five million users is still small compared to our target, on a global scale this has already beaten what TikTok did in Australia,” Meutya said at the Ministry of Communications and Digital (Kemkomdigi) office in Jakarta on Tuesday.

According to Meutya, Indonesia applies a different approach to protecting children in the digital space compared to a number of countries, including Australia.

Whereas Australia imposes restrictions based on age, Indonesia uses an approach based on the risk level of platforms, as regulated under PP Tunas.

She said the risk-based approach considers a number of aspects, including chat features, content unsuitable for children, addiction potential, impacts on mental health, the protection of children’s personal data, and the use of children’s data for advertising and commercial purposes.

She said PP Tunas also encourages digital platforms to adjust their features and services so that their risk levels can be reduced.

Meutya hopes that PP Tunas will not only prevent children from creating accounts on platforms unsuitable for their age, but also push digital platform providers to strengthen child protection in the digital space.

“We hope that going forward this will not only be a ban on children creating accounts on digital platforms, but also a more comprehensive movement so that platforms change as well,” she said.

“Not all platforms have provided evidence that they have adopted the best technology for age verification, which we believe can be applied if they invest in it,” she added.

According to her, platforms have various age verification method options, such as age inference technology, photo verification, and user behaviour analysis.

Meutya said the self-assessment mechanism is an initial step to encourage platform transparency regarding the risk levels of their services while strengthening child protection in the digital space.

“So what we hope is that eventually this becomes a movement like film ratings. It does not have to be the government saying ‘you are high risk’; they declare it themselves,” Meutya said.