Not even cute little LINE stickers are safe from the current “LGBT panic” that is gripping Indonesia.
The South Korea based messaging app’s Indonesian business arm pulled all LGBT-related sticker sets, including ones titled “Love is Love” and “Enjoy Gay Life”, after receiving protests from users here.
“LINE greatly appreciate all the feedback from its users and stakeholders about its features and our products and we are well aware of how sensitive the LGBT issue is in Indonesia,” Line Indonesia’s head of public relations, Teddy Arifianto, said today as quoted Detik.
Teddy said that it was screening its content in order to be sensitive to the perspective of Indonesian culture.
“We are committed to ensuring LINE is an application that everyone can enjoy and use comfortably. At the moment we are trying to coordinate to resolve this issue and withdraw all LGBT stickers from the Indonesian market,” he said.
From our perusal of the LINE sticker story today, it looks like the offending sticker sets have already been pulled.
Teddy went on to say that LINE, as a global company, has a policy of being neutral and non-discriminative. However, he said that things such as “local wisdom” needed to be considered as well in Indonesia.
Of course, “local wisdom” is the PR friendly term that LINE must use to describe prevailing attitudes of prejudice and close-mindedness towards members of the LGBT community in Indonesia.
It’s truly sad to see a global tech giant like LINE being forced to cater to these hateful, discriminatory views just to avoid hurting its business here.
