In October, Indonesia blocked 380,000 online gambling sites. This is part of the new government‘s plan to stamp out the illegal activity. Lawmakers are using artificial intelligence to detect and block providers.
Indonesia has renewed its commitment to eliminate online gambling under Pabrowo Subianto, the new president of the country. The activity is strictly restricted in the world’s largest Muslim country.
Following the October election, the former ministry of communication and informatics became the ministry of communication and digital affairs. Subianto has appointed Meutya Hafid as the head of the rebranded ministry.
Hafid has promptly announced a 100-day agenda with four goals. The four goals are safeguarding personal data, digitizing government services, eradicating online gambling and creating a more child-friendly internet.
Hafid confirmed that the ministry is using artificial intelligence to detect and block illegal gambling content.
She said that if they count from October 20, the number of closed sites has reached around 380,000. That includes some 300,000 illegal IP addresses, as well as thousands of ads on internet platforms such as Meta, Google, and Twitter.
The new minister said that the government has also enlisted special cyber-patrols to detect sites and applications that contain gambling content.
Deputy governor of Bank Indonesia, Juda Agung added that payment service providers, both banks and non-banks, must have fraud detection systems to identify accounts used for online gambling.
Prohibition hasn’t dampened Indonesians’ love of a flutter, even though gambling is illegal in Indonesia. Figures published by ABC Asia indicate gamblers lost RP327 trillion or £16/2 billion or €19.5 billion or $20.5 billion in the previous year. That’s about 1.5% of annual gross domestic product.
According to reports by the PPATK or Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, to date this year, online gambling has generated RP283 trillion. Deposits totals RP43 trillion. Most of that money flows out of the country.
