TikTok has shut down 4.1 million accounts in Indonesia, and YouTube has closed 600,00, to comply with the country’s new regulations limiting social media to users aged 16 and up. Reuters quotes Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid, who says “we’re not just delaying a child’s access, but we want behaviours from platforms to change, too.”
The minister previously promised that “there will be no compromise on compliance,” and said “the government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight the algorithm giants alone.”
Indonesia’s social media law was introduced in March. It follows Australian legislation in imposing age assurance requirements on selected large social media platforms; in addition to TikTok and YouTube, the list includes Meta’s products Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Elon Musk’s X, social gaming platform Roblox, and live streaming platform Bigo Live. It has also faced some of the same challenges; searches for VPNs, often cited as a workaround for biometric age assurance measures, reportedly surged following the March 28 implementation date.
The list of covered platforms will grow. Ministerial Regulation No. 9 refers to the initial cohort as the first phase of a rolling strategy, and the law’s broad scope covers any platform that, by its features, design, or target audience, is “reasonably accessible to or likely to be used by children.”
Tiered system complements broad scope
Commentary from biometrics and identity verification provider Shufti says the breadth is deliberate. “Indonesian regulators documented that children accessed adult-facing platforms at a significant scale using self-declared ages above 17,” says a post on the Shufti blog. “The March 28, 2026, enforcement action targeted gaming and social platforms precisely because their Indonesian user bases included large numbers of minors who had bypassed registration age fields with no independent verification in place.”
Shufti’s breakdown also notes that the law’s consent architecture is “tiered rather than binary,” with obligations that “vary in mechanism and timeline across three age bands” – under 13, 13-16 and 17 and up – “and vary again based on whether the platform carries a high-risk or low-risk classification.”
“The practical consequence: compliance requires both verified age determination and a consent flow that responds to the outcome of that determination.”
This is what losses are supposed to look like
An article in The Next Web notes that “mechanics of enforcement, whether by age declaration, behavioural signals, or other means, were not spelled out in the announcement.” In other words, the government has not specified an age assurance method or approach – but has also left the door open to self-declaration.
Nonetheless, says the piece, “the 4.7 million figure gives other governments a concrete data point on what compliance looks like when a regulator sets a hard age threshold and asks platforms to enforce it directly.”
Indeed, this is what social platforms have desperately been trying to avoid (or ignore). Estimates put the number of TikTok users in Indonesia at around 157 million. Subtracting five million users from that is not a massive blow – but it still cuts out a large swath of regular users, and could start to hurt Big Social if applied with equal rigor by governments across the globe.
The alternative – paying fines for noncompliance – could also get expensive, if the Australian model is any indication: the government recently doubled what it will charge platforms that are in breach of the social media minimum age law.
Article Topics
age verification | biometric age estimation | Indonesia | legislation | Shufti | social media