Screenshot of Deudeuh Alfi Sharin’s Twitter account (@Tataa_Chubby)
After the murder of Deudeuh Alfi Sharin put a spotlight on the world of online prostitution in Indonesia, many have called on the government to put an end to it – mostly people who have no idea how the Internet actually works (such as FPI, who threatened to forcibly close any Internet cafes where online prostitution was taking place).
Most of the sex workers in Indonesia who have a presence online advertise their services through social media accounts. Deudeuh, for example, used a Twitter account (@Tataa_Chubby – which still remains online).
Unless the Indonesian government wanted to take the drastic and disastrously unpopular step of blocking major social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, there is almost no way for them to stem online prostitution in Indonesia at its root.
The Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Rudiantara, admitted that it would be extremely difficult to eradicate online prostitution because of this inconvenient reality.
“Because of the nature [of how online prostitution is done] we would have to address each account one by one,” Rudiantara said today, as quoted by Vivanews.
Admitting that such a task would be almost impossible for his ministry, he asked Indonesian netizens to help detect and locate online prostitution taking place on Twitter and Facebook.
“I urge people to get together to flag things on Twitter with sensitive categories of content,” he said.
However, Rudiantara did not explain what his ministry would do if people actually reported social media accounts being used for prostitution. The government does not have the power to block individual Twitter or Facebook accounts, so the only thing they could realistically do with that information is to report it to the police for further investigation.
