Brilio.net/en - Just imagine what would life be like without Facebook and Google! We might think its not a possibility, but an Indonesian cyber expert thinks the opposite and he make a valid point.
Pratama Persadha asked the government to support existing social media apps created by Indonesian youth in order to strengthen and encourage the emergence of more local social media applications.
In a press conference on Monday (29/2), Persadha took an example from China, whose government strictly blocks Facebook and Google in order to promote similar local services such as Weibo and QQ.
With the local social media on hand, people in the country wont be left behind in their digital interactions when Facebook and Google failed to conform with the regulation in China.
Our government should take consideration on providers whom the majority of the revenue derived from sales data. With local alternative of those services and applications, we can expect that data consumption will remain stable even if the blocking happened, he said, as reported by Okezone.
Indonesia currently has Kaskus, Kompasiana, MindTalk and some other great applications. Nevertheless, a decent local instant messaging application and a social media service are still needed.
Indonesias major providers could participate in the investment in order to build the quality of local apps. We saw how Koprol ended after Yahoo acquisition, and we dont want to see such thing again. Government intervention is immensely needed, said he.
According to Persadha, Indonesian government should be more assertive with foreign technology companies, in order to build the strong foundation to support nations information and cyber sovereignty.
Social media is the main portal for foreign parties to access our data. So, this (local support) will be an integral part of nations sovereignty reinforcement. We dont mean to confine, but what we want is to become the host in our own land, and those who failed to adhere to the regulation are free to walk off, he added.