Indonesia, Meta Team Up to Tackle Online Gambling Spam Comments

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital, together with Meta, the technology company that owns Instagram and Facebook, formed a team to prevent the spread of online gambling content, especially through comment spam on social media accounts.

"We have agreed to form a joint team to address the problem of online gambling on the platform, particularly regarding the issue of spam in comments recently," said Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid at a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday, as ANTARA reported.

She stated that the ministry is not only involving Meta in its efforts to address spam comments containing offensive content. Furthermore, the government will form a joint team to collaborate with various digital platforms. Meutya said that the perpetrators used the comments column on social media as a new method to promote the online gambling site.

Over the past two weeks, the ministry has seen a surge in promotional spam, with numbers rising by around 128 percent compared to the average from January to June of 2026.

The analysis shows that the perpetrators used an organized bot network to flood the comment sections of high-reach accounts, including government, media, public figure, and influencer accounts.

In addressing this new modus operandi, the Ministry of Communication and Digital is collaborating with various parties, including the police, the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), and the Financial Services Authority (OJK).

Meta’s Public Policy Director for Southeast Asia, Sarim Aziz, said the issue of online gambling is a cross-border challenge that cannot be resolved by one party alone.

"Challenges like these are transnational problems that transcend borders, perpetrated by actors who are highly motivated by financial gain, so no single company can solve them alone," Sarim said.

Therefore, Meta encourages collaboration among platforms, law enforcement officials, and the Ministry of Communication and Digital to prevent and stop online gambling activities.

According to Sarim, fraudsters continue to develop various ways to avoid platform detection systems, one of which is by using keywords that appear ordinary and are difficult for the system to detect in their promotional materials.

He also highlighted the comment spam mode on social media accounts that direct users to online gambling websites.

"I think we need to continue to improve policy enforcement through the use of AI (artificial intelligence) technology, better human review, and more effective AI systems," he said.

Read: How Online Gambling Spam Is Swamping Social Media Comments

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