- Indonesian social media users, from celebrities, civil society organizations and public officials, say that their accounts and posts have been restricted or even taken down after posting about Indonesia’s wildfires and haze.
- The Indonesian government is under criticism for its handling of months-long wildfires and haze, which has spread to neighboring countries.
- Many internet users suspect the communications ministry is responsible for taking down and limiting accounts and posts related to the wildfires or critical of the government.
- Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid has denied the accusation, saying there had been “no content takedowns or takedown requests from the ministry to limit information related to wildfires.”
JAKARTA — On Oct. 15, as thick smog continued to choke millions of people, Indonesian health policy research and advocacy organization the Nalar Rawat Institute shared a post on TikTok and Instagram about the health effects of the country’s wildfires.
Little did it know what problems the innocuous posts would create.
The TikTok post featured NASA satellite imagery of carbon monoxide covering the Indonesian archipelago, superimposed on footage of an orange sky in Palangka Raya in Central Kalimantan province. The provincial capital has been one of the areas worst hit by months-long wildfires and haze in 2026.
“All of Indonesia’s sky is covered by carbon monoxide,” the text on the video and the post’s caption read. “The air pollution index reaches 1,200, our living space is no longer habitable.” The figure of 1,200 — four times the hazardous threshold of 300 — came from Ministry of Environment data on the air pollution index in Central Kalimantan on Oct. 14.
Not long after, the post, which garnered 500,000 views and 17,500 likes, was removed from TikTok, the NGO said.
According to Fatus Sahara, Nalar Rawat’s communications officer, on the evening of Oct. 15, TikTok notified the NGO that the post violated its community guidelines. The following day, the post vanished and the NGO’s appeal to reinstate it was rejected.
“There was no specific explanation of what actually violated the community guidelines, just a warning,” Fatus told Mongabay. “Then, all of a sudden, the video disappeared.”
Nalar Rawat shared the same post on Instagram on Oct. 15. The next day, its Instagram account was suspended.
After filing an appeal to Meta with help from digital rights organization Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet), Nalar Rawat regained access to its account in the same evening.
Fatus told Mongabay that Nalar Rawat also experienced an attempted hack of its Instagram account between Oct. 17 and 19, though it is unclear whether the hacking attempts and the account suspension were connected.
Nalar Rawat is not alone. In the past week, multiple Indonesian social media users, from celebrities to civil society organizations and public officials, have said that their accounts and posts have been restricted or even taken down after posting about ongoing wildfires and haze. Several singers and vloggers have said their Instagram accounts were shadowbanned after speaking up about the disaster.
No signs of abating
These allegations come as the Indonesian government is under heavy criticism for its handling of months-long wildfires and haze, which has spread to neighboring countries. As of September, around 1.92 million hectares (4.74 million acres) of land, including forests, have burned, according to Nusantara Atlas, more than double the area in August.
The crisis shows no signs of abating, causing respiratory illnesses and even deaths among local residents, including children and wildlife.
International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI), an NGO that saves orangutans and other primates from wildfires, said it has also been affected by content moderation. An Instagram post about the impact of the inferno on slow lorises and their habitat had been restricted.
Published on Sept. 25 on YIARI’s @kukangku Instagram account, the eight-slide carousel post, which includes an image of an injured animal, explained how to help slow lorises found in residential areas as they are driven away from their habitat.
Two weeks later, on Oct. 10, YIARI found that the post was deemed “sensitive content”, blurred by Instagram and had its soundtrack muted. At that time, the post had received nearly 16,000 likes, the NGO said.
Cahya Riza, YIARI’s digital education coordinator, said that other posts showing similar images were not labeled as sensitive content. She also questioned why the sensitive label did not appear sooner.
“We also don’t receive any further information [from Meta] about what caused the content to be restricted,” Riza told Mongabay, adding that viewers could no longer swipe through the slides on cell phones.
“We have made an effort to foster positive, educational content, and we have consistently addressed conservation issues using an empathetic narrative that avoids placing blame on any specific parties.”
She did acknowledge that some comments on the post blamed and criticized the government.
Yet, public officials are not immune from reported social media restrictions. On Oct. 9, Siak district chief Afni Zulkifli posted a video of her, other officials and residents replanting tree seedlings at a site within the Tanjung Buton Industrial Estate in Riau, which was burned in 2025. In the video, uploaded to TikTok and Instagram, she said, “We quickly plant trees here before oil palm trees are cultivated on the burned peatland.”
On Oct. 20, TikTok removed the video, which had reached 5 million views, stating it violated community guidelines.
Afni, who is outspoken about wildfires, slammed her post’s removal. “We want to ask relevant parties, what is wrong with inviting students and community members to plant trees together at sites that were affected by wildfires?” she wrote in a caption on TikTok Oct. 20. “Is the content so dangerous it has to be taken down?”
Following Afni’s appeal to TikTok, the video was restored the same evening, reported Indonesian news outlet Kompas.com.
Social media posts and online discussions suggest many internet users suspect the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs is responsible for taking down and limiting accounts and posts related to the wildfires or critical of the government. There is no evidence so far that the cases above are linked to any government request.
Muhamad Heychael, a researcher at Remotivi, a media monitoring NGO, said the organization had received reports from users saying their posts about wildfires had been restricted.
“Some of them claimed their posts were shadowbanned, while some were geoblocked, which means the posts can’t be seen in Indonesia,” Heychael said, adding that Remotivi has not verified these reports.
However, the NGO said it received 142 verified complaints from social media users from Jan. 1 to Oct. 15. About 85% of them concerned moderation linked to requests from the ministry, while the remainder involved violations of platforms’ community guidelines. Much of the moderated content was critical of President Prabowo Subianto, the government and parliament, as well as anti-government protests.
Heychael said the data suggest that content moderation occurred when the government faced heavy criticism on social media.
Nenden Sekar Arum, SAFEnet’s executive director, said several factors could cause a drop in views when people post about wildfires, including shadowbans.
She also called on the government to do more to ensure freedom of expression.
“If the government truly upholds people’s freedom to express their opinions on social media, it could use its position to tell digital platforms not to shadowban content and allow Indonesians to speak freely about forest and land fires,” she told Mongabay. “But the ministry has not done that.”
SAFEnet has also observed a similar pattern of restrictions involving content about the major floods in Sumatra in 2025 and protests in August 2026.
“What we need to look at right now is how we can prove whether there are attempts to restrict, shadowban, and so on,” Nenden said.
Both Remotivi and SAFEnet have urged social media users to contact them if posts critical of the government are restricted or taken down.
Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid has denied the accusation. There had been “no content takedowns or takedown requests from the ministry to limit information related to wildfires,” she said on Oct. 21.
She urged users who believe their posts were unfairly restricted to appeal directly to the platforms and report their concerns to the ministry.
In response to the ministry’s statement, Nenden of SAFEnet said on Oct. 23 that although the government may not have issued any direct orders to social media companies, “we need to question whether existing regulations are pushing platforms to restrict content excessively.”
Meta and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
Banner image: A man rides a bicycle through thick haze caused by wildfires in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Oct. 23, 2026. Image by AP Photo/Dias Gustrian.
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