Tumblr Amongst 477 Websites Banned in Indonesia Over Pornography

Indonesia said on Thursday it will block access to microblogging platform Tumblr over pornographic content, the media reported on Thursday.

"After an exhaustive study, the ministry has decided to ban Tumblr since it contains many videos and pornographic images," Xinhua quoted the communication ministry's e-business director, Azhar Hasyim.

Tumblr is part of a list of 477 online sites being blocked for the same reason.

According to Hasyim, blocking access to these sites will take two to three days.

"I have signed off the letter and sent it to the Internet service provider. These websites should be blocked in the next two or three days," said Hasyim.

He said that these websites have violated the country's information and electronic law which prohibits sharing posts that contain vulgarity.

Hasyim said his office had not warned the owners of the websites in advance but would communicate later on.

"Once they have agreed to clean up their websites from pornographic content, then we will immediately reopen the access," said Hasyim.

Tumblr, which has about 280 million blogs, was set up in 2007 by David Karp and acquired by Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 billion (roughly Rs. 7,536 crores).

The ban was announced a week after the Indonesian government demanded the removal of emoticons representing homosexuality in messaging apps, following an Internet campaign against Line, another popular messaging application, for the same reason.