Indonesia blocks Tumblr platform over inappropriate content

Indonesia's government on Tuesday blocked online blogging service Tumblr over "inappropriate content" in more than 360 of its accounts, authorities said.

"Tumblr had no mechanisms or tools to report inappropriate content", said the Indonesian Ministry of Technology and Information in a statement.

The web content monitoring team sent a letter to the Tumblr platform on February 28, giving the American company 48 hours to remove the pornographic content, Efe news reported.

According to the Ministry, Tumblr which hosts more than 400 million blogs through its service globally did not respond to the letter within the stipulated deadline.

Late Monday, Tumblr users criticised on other media the failure to access the service, a second time for the same reason, after a ban of less than a day in February 2016.

Indonesia has temporarily blocked access to messaging applications and social media platforms on several occasions to pressure companies to remove radical and pornographic content.

In January, Google pulled Blued -- one of the most popular gay dating apps -- from the Indonesian version of its online store after the government denounced its inappropriate content.

Also at the beginning of the year, the government announced the National Cyberspace and Encryption Agency would begin searching for online cyber crime, hoaxes and defamations.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, with nearly 88 per cent of its population of 261 million following Islam.

--IANS

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