July 28, 2023
Elon Musk’s decision to rebrand Twitter as “X” led to the site being blocked in Indonesia. The Southeast Asian country has strict laws restricting pornography and gambling, and the domain “X.com” had previously been used to host content that violated those laws.
The Ministry of Communication and Informatics said that it had blocked Twitter “due to the domain name change, which is the same as an old domain name that was used to host pornographic content.”
The block has sparked a debate in Indonesia about the government’s censorship policies. Some people have argued that the block is an infringement on freedom of speech, while others have said that it is necessary to protect Indonesians from harmful content.
This is not the first time that Indonesia has blocked popular websites. In 2021, authorities threatened to block Netflix, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter if they failed to detail the content that appears on their sites to the ministry before a certain deadline. All of the sites managed to escape being blocked by making the required submissions, though some companies have faced bans before.
The new Twitter is likely to face more legal trouble thanks to its name, considering the letter X is commonly trademarked, with nearly 900 companies currently having filed registrations on it in the U.S. alone.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheDailyBeast.
