Indonesia bans search engine DuckDuckGo on gambling, pornography concerns
Indonesia
Friday, 02 Aug 2024
12:22 PM MYT

JAKARTA: Indonesia said it has banned the privacy-oriented search engine DuckDuckGo, citing concerns that it could be used to access pornography and online gambling websites which are illegal in the country, the communications ministry said on Friday (August 2).

Indonesia, with the world's biggest Muslim population, has strict rules that ban the sharing online of content deemed obscene. Social media platform Reddit and video-hosting platform Vimeo are blocked.

Usman Kansong, a communications ministry official, told Reuters that DuckDuckGo had been blocked "because of the many complaints made to us about the rampant online gambling and pornography content in its search results."

Pennsylvania-based and privately owned DuckDuckGo did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal US business hours.

The ministry did not say how DuckDuckGo differs from other search engines such as Alphabet's Google but on its website, DuckDuckGo said it offered several products intended to "help people protect their online privacy" including the search engine, which it said has been praised by privacy advocates.

Indonesia has vowed to crack down on online gambling in recent months and has banned access to several such websites. Though illegal, government data showed 3 million Indonesians went online to gamble last year, spending an estimated US$20 billion, or about 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product. – Reuters

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/indonesia-ba...-041928454.html

Stupid or what ban search engine? Y no ban google?? U search on google also u can find porn or gambling.

This is where our gomen is heading towards starting with the social media licence

LMAO. google can do the same thing.

Full speed backwards!

Duck duck go can access dark web. Last time when I was student experimenting it, I accidentally hit Black Mamba assassin website

That's not how Duckduckgo and the DarkWeb works

steps to establish a cash cow

1. raise regulatory concerns
2. ugut say may ban
3. give supposed leeway by means of laws for licensing
4. fix a fee
5. just keep collecting
6. not enough, go back to step 1

Google has 'certain' restriction to porn and gambling search content.
It is not 100% but the effort is there.

Duckduckgo has long advertised itself offering unfiltered, minimum censored search result.
What happened now is just overdue.

Not explaining how it works. I am saying Google is safer for average users, compared to Duck. Risk perspective

One can't access the darkweb with Duckduckgo. It is impossible.

What about x.com? Owaii

we should learn from the best in the region.

Oh sorry, I used Tor hahahaha forgotten

DuckDuckGo blocked in Indonesia over porn, gambling search results
By Bill Toulas
August 2, 2024

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has been blocked in Indonesia by its government after citizens reportedly complained about pornographic and online gambling content in its search results.

The government's choice to block DuckDuckGo isn't surprising considering the cultural and religious context, with Indonesia being a Muslim country where gambling is prohibited and porn is viewed as morally unacceptable.

In January 2024, Indonesia announced it blocked nearly 600,000 online gambling portals and took action against 5,000 bank accounts that engaged with them.

The government has previously blocked numerous pornography sites, Reddit, and Vimeo, and imposed temporary or partial restrictions on Tumblr, Telegram, TikTok, Netflix, and Badoo.

DuckDuckGo has now confirmed to BleepingComputer that Indonesia blocked its search engine in the country and that it has no means to respond to it.

"We can confirm that DuckDuckGo has been blocked in Indonesia due to their censorship policies. Unfortunately, there is no current path to being unblocked, similar to how we've been blocked in China for about a decade now," DuckDuckGo told BleepingComputer.

At the same time, Google Search remains accessible in Indonesia, which suggests that either the tech giant has implemented effective self-censorship mechanisms for its local search engine or its size makes blocking too disruptive for internet usage in the country.

Indonesians have resorted to using VPN software to bypass the government's restrictions. However, the Indonesian government plans to block free VPNs, making gaining access to blocked sites costly.

Free VPNs next

Virtual Private Network (VPN) tools are commonly used to bypass censorship imposed by governments and internet service providers.

When using VPNs, users can make connections from other countries to once again access DuckDuckGo, but free offerings may soon be removed.

Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi stated that the government intends to restrict access to free VPN tools, as they know these are used to access blocked online gambling portals.

"Yesterday, Mr. Hokky (Ministry's Director General of Informatics Applications) had a meeting with Mr. Wayan (Ministry's Director General of Postal and Information Technology Operations), and we will shut down free VPNs to reduce access to networks for the general public to curb the spread of online gambling," stated Setiadi on June 31, 2024.

"I specifically have to include the issue of online gambling to make it clear that this is the darkest side of digitalization."

The same ministry announcement highlighted the risks of free VPN services, underlining personal data theft, malware infections, and making internet connectivity slow or unreliable.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/secur...search-results/

Bebek cannot anymore
So use Bing ka indo

darkweb only happens for me when there's a power failure...everything else is dark too and blardy hot+humid!

indonesia firewall is as strong as ccp one or just dns level blocking btw?

Somewhere in between

It is not as simple as changing DNS to be able to access blocked sites

There is some redirection of DNS packets to alternative DNS providers like Google, Cloudflare DNS.

But using DoH/DoT may get around that, depending on ISP.

Some ISP's will block the route to the blocked site even with the correct DNS query.

https://github.com/bebasid/KominFudge

But (for now?) they don't block Tor or commercial VPN providers, unlike China

Heard that Indonesia is now desperate for funds to complete its new capital Nusantara. To secure it they need to satisfy and listen to the deep state to filter out all anti speech materials/contents from their citizens.

Which means Duckduckgo is actually very effective search engine that threaten to expose freedom or expressions and propaganda.

Why do they want to remove it if they're confident enough that false rumors and lies won't shake their integrity?

You see the nature of humans is simple, the more you try to restrict the public from accessing info the more curiosity and suspicion you will invoke them.

The same red tape laws that we also have that some things cannot be questioned. Why cannot be questioned?

People will even become more curious and want to question it more. Similarly it's like religion and beliefs. People will seek validity and truth especially the more intellectual/smarter ones for validation.

No surprise nations with lower average IQ are always suppressed with this type of laws.

Try imposing bans like this in first world countries, people will even want to access the search engine more after this.

This post has been edited by petpenyubobo: Aug 5 2024, 02:42 PM