Digital Rights Violations During the Late August 2025 Demonstrations in Indonesia

The Advocacy Team for Democracy (TAUD) opened a complaint hotline for rights violations, including digital rights, during protests that occurred at several locations in Indonesia since the end of August 2025.

From August 25 to September 8, 2025, TAUD recorded 92 cases of digital rights violations: 51 from monitoring and 41 from complaints.

“These cases are often intertwined, so one case can involve more than one form of digital rights violation,” TAUD stated in a press release from Jakarta on Tuesday (September 9, 2025).

The following details the number of digital rights violation cases by type, based on TAUD's monitoring and complaints received from August 25 to September 8, 2025:

• Digital attacks against demonstrators and critical netizens: 35 cases
• Internet access disruption: 26 cases
• Criminalization of critical social media account admins: 19 cases
• Excessive content moderation: 16 cases
• Fake news: 8 cases
• Racially based hate speech and online gender-based violence (GBV): 4 cases

TAUD provided examples, such as digital attacks targeting protesters and critical netizens, including spam calls, doxing, hacking, and fake orders.

Internet access disruption included restrictions on certain features, account suspensions, and power outages in parts of Jakarta and Bandung, West Java.

Meanwhile, social media administrators were criminalized on accusations of orchestrating the August 25 and 28, 2025 demonstrations.

Excessive content moderation (overmoderation) targeted information about the protests and critical content.

“One example is the video of police officers shooting protesters who entered the Mako Brimob. Accounts spreading this video were also suspended on social media,” TAUD said.

Fake news examples include alleged information operations spreading information aimed at inciting unrest during the September 1, 2025 demonstration.

“This false information was fabricated, such as provocative reports on student consolidations and doxing incidents in Bogor, Bali, and Yogyakarta,” according to TAUD.