Indonesia ready to “shut down” Musk’s X over adult content

Indonesia is prepared to ban the social media platform X if it doesn’t comply with a regulation barring adult content, the country's communications minister announced.

Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim-majority country with a population exceeding 275 million people, has strict rules that ban the sharing online of content deemed obscene.

The countries’ minister, Budi Arie Setiadi, told Reuters he had sent a warning letter to X related to this matter.

"We will certainly shut its services down," he said, pointing to Indonesia's electronic information and transaction (ITE) law that can carry a six-year jail sentence if someone spreads pornographic content.

His comments in an interview come after the social media platform, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, recently updated its policies to permit consensually produced adult content.

X’s adult content policy updates greenlit the sharing of consensual sexual content and adult nudity, with an added caveat that such content has to be properly labeled and not target children or users who chose not to see such content.

Pre-Musk Twitter allowed adult material as well. However, no official policy existed, leaving pornographic content creators in the gray zone. Numerous sex workers from the OnlyFans platform used Twitter to promote their work.

Budi said X has not responded to Indonesia's warning letter, adding that the government would send more letters before deciding on a potential closure. X, formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Indonesians are big social media users, and X has nearly 25 million users in the country, according to data-gathering business Statista.

Earlier this week, X started hiding what posts users like, with Musk saying that users should be able to like anything they like without “getting attacked” for doing so.