Indonesia reverses Tumblr ban, for now
A day after it declared a site-wide ban on Tumblr, Indonesia decided Thursday to take a more measured approach to censoring objectionable content on the site.
On Wednesday local time, a government official told the BBC that authorities would block Tumblr because it hosted pages that carried porn.
But after users were outraged by the news, the government appears to have reversed its outright ban. Instead, officials plan to reach out to Tumblr's owner, Yahoo, to figure out how to restrict access to adult content on the blogging site.
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The ministry of communication and information posted an update to say it has requested Tumblr to "self censor" its pornographic content.
In addition, officials expect to continually monitor the site to ensure it meets their standards and may ban it down the road if porn continues to be accessible on it in Indonesia.
Tumblr has yet to comment on the short-lived ban and the self-censorship request. Tumblr's owner, Yahoo, has not responded to Mashable's request for comment.
A user in Indonesia told Mashable he was able to access Tumblr as of Thursday afternoon, but the site had been blocked over the past two days.
The earlier BBC report said that the country initially decided to ban Tumblr without first discussing it with the company.
"We must ban the site first, and tell them later," Azhar Hasyim, e-business director at Indonesia's information ministry was quoted as saying.
Indonesians reacted by tweeting their dismay at the news, and #savetumblr started to trend in the country by Thursday morning.
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This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
In the post below, a user points out that users don't need to go to Tumblr for porn; adult sites on the Internet exist.
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A petition was launched as well, which has garnered 11,000 signatures in seven hours as of this writing.
Tightening the grip on Tumblr is part of a broader government-led crackdown, which has seen 477 sites blocked for porn. The sites are not necessarily porn sites, but do carry adult content.
Last week, Indonesia's conservative Muslim government instructed messaging apps in the country to drop LGBT emoji for Indonesian users because homosexuality goes against religious teachings. Line, which is popular in the country, complied.
Indonesia's largest and state-owned telecommunications operator also decided to block Netflix in January, shortly after the TV service trumpeted its global rollout. Telkom said it was moving to block Netflix because it had not registered itself to be censored under the country's content rules.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, so the bans will mean that these sites stand to lose access to a sizable user base.
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Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
