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Op-Ed: Indonesia vs fake news as paid trolls attack president

The pattern is the same as elsewhere; paid trolls spreading hoaxes and false information .The target for the trolls is President Joko Widodo. There’s an election on April 17, and they’re attacking the very top of the Indonesian government, and hitting him and his reputation with a tide of totally fake stories and rumours. The trolling started a couple of weeks ago, just as the campaigns were getting started.
Some of the fake news is so fake it’s astonishing, but has a very nasty undertone. One story claims that President Widodo offered to hand over to China Indonesia’s two biggest islands, Java and Sumatra, for $21 billion to “write down debt”. There happen to be most of Indonesia’s 250 million people on those two islands, and $21 billion is a drop in the bucket to Indonesia’s GDP and debt.
It may seem ridiculous, but:
• China is communist. Communism is a very bad word in Indonesia, and the President is also being routinely smeared with rumours that he was, or is, a communist.
• There have been serious tensions with the Chinese part of Indonesian society in the past, including deaths. The way the fake news is structured is therefore a type of hate speech, intended to provoke racial tensions.
• The editor of a newspaper was recently released from jail after publishing a story saying the President was Chinese, which he isn’t.
• President Widodo is in fact trying to get Chinese investment capital in Indonesia. That’s overall a good, practical move in an under-capitalised country and common in the region, but it’s also more fuel for the fake news.
• The current Indonesian government, and/or any subsequent government, does not and will not take kindly to attempts to alienate China. Chinese trade is super-important, as are good relations with Beijing. It’s an extremely counterproductive disinformation campaign, definitely not in Indonesia’s best interests.
You can see why the Indonesian government is taking this so seriously. Other very sensitive issues, like religion, etc. are also part of these fake news cycles. In short, someone is pushing all of Indonesia’s buttons, hard, and often.
Very odd indeed
There’s also something very odd about this fake news, too. Indonesian politics is incredibly volatile. Indonesians would know they were playing with fire to do this sort of thing. It’s generally not a good idea to poke the Indonesian political system with a stick, because it will always hit back, usually hard, whoever’s in power. It’s also extremely unlikely that President Widodo’s opponent, Prabowo Subianto, would take the risk of any association with such an outlandish, and staggeringly stupid, methodology.
It’s a very high risk thing to do, and in this case, a dumb thing to do, because the government can prove the trolls are producing nothing but fake news. So far, the government has taken some pretty drastic steps:
* Arrests. Trolls are being charged with spreading misinformation and hate speech.
* The Indonesian government is holding weekly briefings to debunk and clarify fake news issues.
It is possible that someone in Indonesia thinks this is a good idea, but not too many Indonesians would agree. Violence has been a grim part of relatively recent Indonesian history, and many people died in the past.
The fake news plague is obviously being directed and targeted, and obviously coming from a single source working systematically. Paid trolls, by definition, don’t act independently. They congregate, they spew their garbage far and wide, and the “news” is always related to some sensitive issue.
The question is who or what is dumb enough to try this in Indonesia. Indonesian governments do NOT like foreign interference, and if the trolls are Indonesian, the methods are foreign. This ugly, and largely useless, scenario is definitely imported to that extent.
Trolls need not expect too much gratitude or trust from the President’s opponents in the election, either. Indonesian politics was already tough enough without trolls. They’ll be well aware the same methods could be used against them in future.
Keep an eye on this situation, because if America’s nutcase politics are successfully transferred around the world, things could get very dangerous indeed. Indonesia is the unwilling test of how this method will or won’t work around the world.

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Written By

Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.

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