The Minister of Communication and Information, Rudiantara, emphasized that the government would not hesitate to close the Facebook platform if the world's largest social media site became a place for spreading false news, as happened to the Rohingya.

"I take a position, I threaten to close Facebook and the government has no doubts if it has to close Facebook if it is used to [spread] hoaxes," said Rudiantara at the Ministry of Communication and Informatics Building, Jakarta, Thursday (6/4/2018) as reported by Antara.

Rudiantara said he did not want things in Myanmar to happen in Indonesia. After some time ago, Facebook admitted it was used as an anti-Rohingya propaganda tool in Myanmar.

He said that his party would not just take action to close social media platforms, but through a process and with the right reasons.

Although he assessed that so far, Facebook is among the three platforms that are less cooperative, namely only fulfilling 50 percent of the Ministry of Communication and Information's requests to close content that was considered not according to the norm since two years ago.

"This is what I want to convey to the public, that this is the situation, I personally have no intention of closing anything like that, it must be guarded for the interests of the state and society," said Rudiantara.

In addition, indications of the leakage of one million user data from Indonesia in the Cambridge Analytica case require a cooperative attitude from Facebook in following up on requests from the Ministry of Communication and Information.


Previously, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology had stated that he had summoned Facebook representatives from Indonesia to clarify information about the data leak.

The request for clarification relates to information leaking the data of 1 million Facebook users from Indonesia to Cambridge Analytica, a political data analysis consulting firm based in the UK.

"Today, one million Indonesian [information] appeared [leaked], so I want to confirm that," said Rudiantara at the Ministry of Communications and Informatics Building, Jakarta, Thursday (5/4/2018).

Rudiantara added that he would ask for certainty about the number of Facebook users from Indonesia whose data was leaked to Cambridge Analytica. Because, according to Rudiantara, Facebook initially stated that 50 million users from all over the world had misused data, but later it turned out to be 87 million.

Facebook's Chief Technology Officer, Mike Schroepfer, recently uploaded information about the leak on his official blog. He said the data of 87 Facebook users from various countries indicated that Cambridge Analityca had misused it.


About 70.6 million Facebook users data that was leaked came from the United States or the most. Then, in second place, is 1.17 million data on Facebook users from the Philippines. In third place is Indonesia, with 1.09 million leaked user data.

The Minister of Communication and Information emphasized that all social media must be willing to participate in maintaining the stability of the country if they want to do business in Indonesia, if it causes instability in Indonesia, the government will act decisively.


Meanwhile, Facebook itself has launched a third party fact checking program on Monday (2/4/2018), to encourage digital literacy and better news literacy in Indonesia. This is the first program in Asia Pacific.

In the third party fact checking program, Facebook cooperates with online media Tirto.id. In this regard, Facebook Indonesia News Partnership Lead, Alice Budisatrijo said the reason his party collaborated with Tirto was because this media is the only media in Indonesia that has been accredited as a fact checker.