Document details

Content Moderation and Local Stakeholders in Indonesia

London: Article 19 (2022), 77 pp.

Contains bibliogr. pp. 70-74

CC BY-NC-SA

"This research has shown that in the midst of the complex and diverse cultural context of Indonesia, growing use and misuse of social media in the country, and the complexity of ‘grey-area’ problematic content in the country, there has been a lack of meaningful and continuous dialogue between platforms and leading and peripheral civil society groups. Civil society groups and lay users have been battling individually, instead of coordinating, against the content moderation decisions of platforms. Most of them do not know how to appeal against the platform’s decisions. Meanwhile, the leading civil society groups in their capacity as the official partners of platforms have often felt powerless in the negotiation process with platforms. Platforms usually hold the final decision-making power, while not displaying sufficient understanding of the complexity of the local context. Accordingly, there have been cases of over and under content moderation in the country, that either hurt freedom of expression or the safety of individuals and public. When we submitted the idea of a local Coalition on Freedom of Expression and Content Moderation to the interviewees, most of them responded positively. To be clear, there is already a number of multi-stakeholder groups and civil society alliances working on issues of Internet governance, freedom of expression, and social media ethics in the country, but only few have shown interest, resources, and commitment to develop work on the issue of the contribution of local actors to content moderation on social media." (Recommendations, page 57)
Introduction, 7
The state of content moderation in Indonesia, 15
Analysis of stakeholders, 46
Conclusion, 56
Recommendations, 57