Indonesia's top court bars site blocking without notice and a stated reason

Indonesia's Constitutional Court ruled on September 29 that the government must notify the owner of content and give a reason before cutting off access to a website, post or app. Decision 311/PUU-XXIV/2026 concerns Article 40(2b) of the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law as amended in 2024. The court found the article unconstitutional unless read to include that duty, and the ruling is final.

The rule covers a lot of ground. According to Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid, her ministry, Komdigi, blocked 2,737,962 items of "negative content" in 2025, of which 2,087,109 were linked to online gambling. About 392,000 blocks started with complaints from the public, 493,000 with requests from government agencies, and the rest were found by automated crawling. Until now none of these blocks required a court or a written explanation.

What changed in Article 40(2b)

The old text simply allowed the government to cut off access to electronic information with unlawful content. The court has now read it differently: access may be cut only after the authorities issue a digital or written notice setting out the reasons. Judge Arsul Sani said the old provision had no procedure through which an affected party could learn the rationale for a decision, and described the notice as a check against abuse of power. Anyone who believes a block is unlawful can now challenge it using the explanation they receive.

The petition was brought by students and a researcher, and the court granted it in part. It was the second attempt to strike down the same article. In 2021 the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) and Jayapura resident Arnoldus Belau challenged it after the internet shutdown in Papua during the 2019 protests, and the court rejected the case in full (81/PUU-XVIII/2020). Two judges dissented in 2021. One of them, Suhartoyo, is now chief justice, and he read out the September 29 ruling.

There is still no court before a block

The court does not require a judge's approval. The ministry still does the blocking, including through its Trust Positif DNS list, only now with paperwork and a stated reason. That is why Indonesia stays in the same column of our country guide to site blocking without a court, with a note on the new procedure. The ruling does not directly affect users inside the country: the notice goes to the owner of the content, not to the person trying to open the page.

Gambling pages are far from the only target. In late July 2022 the ministry, then called Kominfo, cut off Steam, Epic Games, Battle.net, Ubisoft, Origin, Nintendo, Yahoo and PayPal within days. Under the MR5 regulation they were blocked because they had not registered as "private electronic system operators", and registration obliges them to hand over user data on request. Steam came back after Valve registered on August 2, and PayPal was temporarily unblocked and given a few days to register. The registration duty remains after the new ruling. What changes is the order of events: a platform must receive a notice with a reason before the block, rather than hear about it from its users.

The most practical question is still open. With nearly 2.7 million blocks a year, mostly of online casino pages, the authorities will either design a mass notification format or block less. How the ministry will comply will become clear once it issues a new procedure.