On 9 November 2026, Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (Komdigi) said it had initialled the government's problem inventory (DIM) for the third amendment to the 2002 Broadcasting Law. Deputy Minister Angga Raka Prabowo said personal social media accounts, family vlogs and small-business creators are "not automatically categorised" as broadcasting activities that need a Broadcasting Operation Licence. According to Komdigi's own press release, the obligations fall on professional channels: those with an editorial team, a schedule, substantial monetisation and reach in the millions. Those channels would have to follow Broadcast Content Standards. The package also proposes age-based access limits, age verification and algorithm transparency.
This is a better starting point than the 2024 draft, though it is still an announcement and not a bill text.
The strongest case for the government's approach
The regulator's logic is not frivolous. Licensed television and radio carry content, tax and employment obligations. A channel with a newsroom, a programming schedule and a multi-million audience competes for the same viewers and advertisers while carrying none of them. Komdigi frames the goal as a level playing field, with "the same standards for those equally professional". Anyone who believes a mass-audience publisher should owe the public something, such as correction mechanisms or protections against incitement, will find that principle reasonable.
The child-safety agenda also answers a real concern. Indonesia already moved on it: Ministerial Regulation No. 9 of 2026, as summarised by a legal-update service, requires social media operators to deactivate accounts of children under 16 and sets out age-verification duties. That regulation implements Government Regulation 17/2025. The broadcasting amendment would add a statutory layer on top.
Why the exemption is progress
The 2024 debate was far more alarming. A March 2024 draft would have given the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) oversight of "all broadcasting platforms, including OTT and streaming services", according to the Jakarta Post. It would also have barred content showing violence, mysticism or LGBT themes. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that the leaked draft would restrict "exclusive investigative journalism" and apply to online streaming. It urged lawmakers to scrap the amendments.
Against that backdrop, a government statement that ordinary people posting from personal accounts are outside the licensing net, and that freedom of expression is one of three guiding principles, is a meaningful concession. A licence requirement for every family vlog or street-food channel would have been unenforceable and chilling. It would also have given regulators discretionary leverage over millions of speakers.
Where the risk remains
The criteria Komdigi named are qualitative. "Substantial monetisation" and "reach in the millions" have no numeric thresholds in the public statement. Neither does "editorial team", which a two-person comedy channel or a citizen-journalism outlet could arguably have. The ministry's word "automatically" matters: it implies a creator can be pulled in later. The ministry also stressed that initialling the DIM does not mean every issue is settled, and substance remains to be negotiated with the House of Representatives.
Three problems follow:
- Discretion over definition. If the test lives in a ministerial regulation or KPI guideline instead of the statute, the line can move without legislative debate. Creators who grow past an undefined threshold would face a cliff, not a ramp.
- Content standards as speech controls. "Broadcast Content Standards" written for terrestrial television, with its prohibitions on categories of lawful content, would be a poor fit for online channels. Importing them wholesale would reintroduce the 2024 concerns through a different door.
- Age verification costs. Mandatory verification is the hardest part to get right. It can push platforms to collect identity documents or biometric data, creating privacy risks larger than the harm they aim to prevent. The public statements give no age tiers or technical standard, and algorithm transparency is similarly undefined: to whom is it disclosed, and with what trade-secret protection?
What a proportionate bill would contain
The government can keep its stated principles and still make them durable. The statute should:
- Write objective, published thresholds, such as audience size and revenue over a sustained period, with a graduated compliance path in place of a licence cliff.
- Keep editorial and investigative content out of prior-restraint style standards, and route disputes to a body with appeal rights rather than regulator-only discretion.
- Pair age-assurance duties with data-minimisation rules, so verification does not become a database of children's identities.
- Require regulators to publish what they request from platforms under algorithm transparency, with independent audit options instead of source-code disclosure.
The next step is the DPR's substantive discussions. The test of this reform is whether the creator carve-out appears in the statute in enforceable form, not whether a deputy minister says so at a press event. Indonesia has a chance to adopt a model that protects children and sets duties for mass-audience publishers without treating every person with a phone as a broadcaster. That outcome depends on the drafting.