Censorship by proxy: Who is silencing coverage on fires?

As toxic haze from seasonal forest and peatland fires blanketed swaths of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua, a second crisis unfolded online: Content creators, civil society organizations, environmental activists and regional officials reported a sudden wave of digital suppression.

Eyewitness footage of burning peatlands was flagged as sensitive, awareness campaigns were down-ranked and high-visibility posts were abruptly removed, among them a viral video by Siak Regent Afni Zulkifli documenting postfire reforestation efforts. When netizens accused the government of state-sponsored censorship, Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid issued a firm denial. The ministry had not submitted any takedown orders for forest fire content to social media platforms, she said, stressing that real-time public reporting was vital for emergency response.

That raised an obvious question: If the state was not behind the suppression, who was responsible?

The answer points to major platforms such as Meta, TikTok and X, whose silence obscures a broader legal and structural shift. Under a 2020 ministerial regulation and subsequent compliance directives, the government has effectively outsourced moderation to private companies. Platforms can be penalized for failing to police “prohibited content” and content deemed to cause “public unrest”, which has pushed them to act preemptively as censors through opaque algorithmic suppression and protect themselves from potential sanctions.

Netizens and public figures noticed that posts raising awareness about haze and forest destruction immediately suffered severe drops in reach. Activist accounts were suspended and videos documenting environmental rehabilitation were removed under vague terms of service provisions.

Despite the public outcry, the platforms stayed silent. They offered no explanations to affected creators, nor did they say whether automated filters had misclassified disaster reporting. That silence may serve a corporate strategy: By presenting mass content removal as routine terms of service enforcement, platforms limit their exposure to local liabilities and avoid friction with host governments.

Under the 2020 regulation, foreign and domestic private electronic system operators (PSE) face strict compliance rules. Standard takedown requests must be actioned within 24 hours, while content deemed a threat to public safety, public order or national security must be taken down within just four. The definition for “prohibited content” is broad and ambiguous, covering material deemed to cause “public anxiety” or disturb “public order”. Noncompliance can bring heavy fines, operational sanctions and a nationwide block.

These penalties reshape platforms’ risk calculations. With so much at stake commercially, a wait and see approach is too costly, so platforms have a strong incentive to calibrate their automated systems toward over-removal.

Meutya’s statement that the ministry had not requested any takedowns may well be true, but it misses how modern digital governance works. The state no longer needs to issue a notice for every sensitive post. Through regulatory design, it has created structural incentives that encourage platforms to demote or remove viral posts depicting environmental crises, toxic haze and public panic before they attract official scrutiny.

The collateral damage is significant. Language models and computer vision often struggle with local context. When millions of users simultaneously post footage of orange skies and dense smoke, algorithms can misread it as graphic violence, distressing content or coordinated spam and trigger automatic down-ranking or removal. By shifting the burden of proactive moderation onto private companies, the state retains plausible deniability. It can publicly champion open information while platform algorithms quietly contain crisis reporting.

The incident exposes a dangerous vulnerability in public discourse. In a disaster, social media is vital infrastructure for public safety, resource coordination and community accountability. When regulation compels platforms to act as private police under the threat of bans, free expression and public awareness quietly erode. Resolving this requires moving beyond simply framing the issue as state versus user and toward systemic platform accountability.

Until technology companies are required to disclose their moderation rules, audit their crisis response algorithms and resist overreaching compliance demands, the public will remain caught between state regulatory pressure and silent corporate censorship.