Ministry of Communication and Digital Teams Up with Meta to Tackle Online Gambling Comment Spam

The Ministry of Communication and Digital (Kemkomdigi) has joined forces with Meta, the technology company that oversees Instagram and Facebook, to form a team dedicated to preventing the spread of online gambling content, especially through spam comments on social media accounts. “We have agreed to establish a joint team to tackle the problem of online gambling on the platform, particularly regarding the recent feedback we have received about comment spam,” said Minister of Communication and Digital Meutya Hafid during a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday. She stated that Kemkomdigi is not only involving Meta in efforts to handle spam comments containing online gambling content. Going forward, the government will also form joint teams in collaboration with various other digital platforms. Over the past two weeks, Kemkomdigi recorded a surge of approximately 128 per cent in online gambling promotional spam compared to the average findings from January to June 2025. Analysis indicates that perpetrators are using organised bot networks to flood the comment sections of accounts with high public reach, such as government accounts, media outlets, public figures, and influencers. Meta’s Director of Public Policy for Southeast Asia, Sarim Aziz, said the issue of online gambling is a transnational challenge that cannot be resolved by a single party. “Challenges like this are cross-border problems that transcend territorial boundaries, carried out by actors who are highly motivated by financial gain, so no single company can solve it alone,” Sarim said. According to Sarim, online gambling operators continuously develop various methods to evade the platform’s detection systems, one of which involves using seemingly ordinary keywords that are difficult for the system to detect in their promotional materials. He also highlighted the modus operandi of comment spam on social media accounts that directs users to online gambling websites. “I think we must continue to improve policy enforcement through the use of AI technology, better human review, and more effective AI systems,” he stated.