PSI Blasts Kominfo Over Plans to Restrict Social Media
Translator
Editor
23 October 2020 17:21 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) on Friday condemned the Communication and Informatics (Kominfo) Ministry over the government’s plan to impose restrictions in social media as an attempt to curb the spread of hoax.
In order to fight the lingering problem of disinformation the government faces, PSI called on the Kominfo Ministry to strengthen its fact-checking capacity.
“We call on the Kominfo Ministry to put forth fact-checking rather than blocking social media in order to tackle the rampant spread of hoaxes,” said PSI spokesperson Sigit Widodo in a written statement on Friday, October 23.
Widodo believed stopping the spread of disinformation could not be done by merely blocking social media accounts that were considered to be the sources, as perpetrators would just easily create new accounts. “Block one and one thousand will rise. That’s how it has always been,” he said.
The PSI spokesperson believed that the Kominfo Ministry had not shown considerable efforts to strengthen its fact-checking capacity and always disproved hoaxes by merely claiming that they were hoaxes but failed to back the claims with evidence.
Read: Govt's Plan To Block Social Media Accounts May Threaten Diversity of Opinion
M ROSSENO AJI
