Our work
Government requests to remove online content in Indonesia
Torira Research studies the legal complaints, court orders, and government and law-enforcement requests that seek to remove online material concerning Indonesia — including those grounded in the Electronic Information and Transactions Law (UU ITE). We examine which agencies ask, which provisions they invoke, what they target, and whether platforms comply. Everything we conclude, we publish.
What we study
State and law-enforcement requests
Which Indonesian agencies and courts seek removals, how often, and how that activity has changed over time.
UU ITE in practice
Which provisions are invoked in removal demands, and against what kinds of speech and speakers.
Platform response
Whether recipients comply fully, partially, or refuse — and what distinguishes each outcome.
Method in brief
Our primary evidence is the record of the removal requests themselves. We analyse notices categorised as GovernmentRequest, LawEnforcementRequest, and CourtOrder, filtered to Indonesian jurisdictions and entities, reading the laws cited in each request alongside the action the recipient platform recorded. Copyright notices are outside our scope: this is research on state action, not on rights enforcement.
Current research programme
A baseline of state removal requests concerning Indonesia
Before any argument can be made about trends, someone has to establish what the public record actually contains. This study assembles the first systematic count of state-originated removal requests concerning Indonesia held in public notice archives, broken down by requesting body, legal basis, and recorded outcome.
Intended output: a public analysis article, with full method and parameters published alongside it. The period covered and the publication date will be fixed and announced once we have surveyed how far back the record offers usable coverage.
Which UU ITE provisions appear most often in removal demands
Removal requests that cite domestic law tell us which statutory provisions are being used as instruments against online material. This study reads the legal citations recorded in court orders and law-enforcement requests to establish which articles recur, and against what categories of content.
Intended output: a public analysis article, sequenced after the baseline study.
Publications
We have not published yet. Our first output is in preparation, and once its publication date is set it will be listed and kept there, so that our record can be judged against what we said we would do rather than against a general impression of activity.
Openness
Our research questions, query parameters, and analysis code are published alongside every output, together with the limitations we know of. Findings are released under Creative Commons Attribution so that anyone can check or extend them.
Data sources
We work with publicly available records: the Lumen Database maintained by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the transparency reports published by platforms operating in Indonesia, and public statements and filings by Indonesian authorities.
These records are partial by nature. Lumen holds only what notice recipients choose to submit, and identifying details are redacted before publication. We treat every figure we produce as a floor, never as a census, and we say so in each output.
This product uses the Lumen API but is not endorsed or certified by Lumen.