In Indonesia, digital spaces are the site of a challenging balancing act between religious expression and hate speech.
Since 2016, Indonesia is recorded to have the highest number of VPN users in the world. This articl discusses what a VPN is, what drives its high usage in Indonesia and how one can safely choose a VPN for daily use. The article was originally published in Bahasa Indonesia on Kompas, and has been translated to English on EngageMedia.org.
On April 30, 2021, parts of Papua were cut off from the internet amid a long-standing dispute between Papua and the Indonesian government that continues to intensify. Internet was restored on June 8, but uncertainty over the region’s special autonomy status necessitates staying vigilant against similar digital rights violations going forward.
With Big Tech monopolies owning many of the online services we regularly use, is there still a space (and an audience) for platforms and content outside this mostly proprietary ecosystem? EngageMedia is up for the challenge with the launch of Cinemata, a platform for social and environmental films about the Asia-Pacific. In this podcast episode, we expound on Cinemata with our Executive Director Andrew Lowenthal.
On May 28, 2021, members of the Coconet community were among 25 organisations that signed a statement calling on the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kominfo) to repeal Ministerial Regulation 5 (MR5), which can lead to “prepublication censorship” in its current state.
As part of EngageMedia’s campaign to mainstream digital rights in Thailand, EngageMedia interviews Thitirat Thipsamritkul, a lecturer from Thammasat University’s Faculty of Law, about the state of digital rights in Thailand and why the Thai public should pay attention. The full interview is part of EngageMedia’s broader #HumanOnTheLine campaign to educate and empower Thai netizens about their digital rights.
EngageMedia hosted last May 7, 2021, “The Labour Behind the Glamorous Industrial Revolution 4.0”, a webinar that sought to flesh out the realities that workers in the digital space are facing, and the lack of protection Indonesian labour laws are affording them.
In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, 28 organisations from around the world are demanding that Facebook stop intimidating users reliant on WhatsApp to accept its latest privacy policy. Facebook should immediately restore the individual’s right to determine how their private, personal data is collected and exploited on WhatsApp.
There are a growing number of messaging applications available to us, but many of these are not transparent in the amount of user data they collect and the lack of privacy measures in place to secure our conversations. To help Indonesians better understand which messaging apps protect their users the most, Coconet member Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) has published a “Guide to Choosing a Privacy-Protecting Conversation App”.