TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Communication and Informatics Ministry Rudiantara said that he is not worried to be deemed ‘trigger-happy’ upon blocking numerous digital platforms after he decided to block the Tik Tok app.

He maintains that the reasoning behind his numerous mobile app bans were done for society’s common good.

“Which would you be more worried about? Not banning the app or banning it for the sake of the Indonesian citizens, especially teens,” said Rudiantara in Jakarta on Tuesday, July 3.

Furthermore, Rudiantara deemed the video sharing app had harbored many negative contents that are inappropriate to be watched by children. He claims that thousands of people have filed official complaints to the Ministry prior to the ban.

Before banning Tik Tok by DNS blocking, the Ministry had also banned Tumblr, Vine, and Bigo for the same reasons, which is the large amount of negative contents. However, Bigo responded to the Ministry’s complaints and was willing to improve its contents while Tik Tok and Tumblr chose not to respond.

“We need the cooperation of the platform itself to sort out the negative contents,” said Rudiantara who defends that the government itself cannot filter the negative contents on every platform.

Apart from Tik Tok, Minister Rudiantara called for the public to carefully choose other apps that provide positive contents and does not want responsible app users to be the victim of several negative account owners.

VINDRY FLORENTIN