The coronavirus has spread to many countries around the world, and has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
While Wuhan in China as the epicenter of the pandemic has started to heal, Indonesia in Southeast Asia is still bracing for the worse.
After the government urged people to stay at home, work from home and maintain social distancing, Indonesia's Communication and Information Technology Minister Johnny G. Plate also urged people staying at home as per government recommendation not to illegally stream movies online.
In a virtual press conference on Monday, the Minister who replaced Rudiantara said that illegally streaming movies could create bandwidth saturation resulting in latency and performance degradation in the country's overall internet connection.
The issues, he said, could hinder people who were working or studying from home.
“With all due respect, please stop streaming illegal movies,” he said. “And for those who are using a virtual private network [VPN], please control yourself and use online resources wisely.”
Since the government started urging people to stay at home in a broader effort to curb the spread of the Wuhan novel coronavirus, the Minister went on to say that the country has recorded a significant increase in internet traffic. G Plate however, didn't mention any figures.
He added that since bandwidth is limited, the added traffic from unnecessary online activities could simply overload the country's internet infrastructure.
While Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has long blocked illegal streaming websites, the numbers are simply too many. Once an illegal streaming website has been taken down, many came to replace it. And most often, the blocked website will return with a new registered domain.
This cat-and-mouse game has been commencing since Rudiantara, the former Minister who was best known to block websites that don't adhere to his policies, whenever he could.
On another part of the story, the Ministry also said that it has blocked hundreds of items of false news and misinformation regarding the COVID-19, which had mostly been detected and circulating on social media networks.
The ministry said that the steps against hoaxes about the China's deadly coronavirus include blocking the source of the information that disseminated the hoaxes.
The Ministry said that many of the misinformation include those about patients in Indonesia that had died after being infected by the virus, coronavirus as a biological weapon developed by China for the uyghur genocide, bat soup from China as the source of the coronavirus, imported Xiaomi smartphones from China carry coronavirus, China's President Xi Jingping asking the Islam community to pray for the best, the notion that drinking boiled garlic water as a remedy can cure the coronavirus, among many others.
"Please don't immediately forward information that is still not verified yet," said Johnny G. Plate as he advised the public.
And to further educate the public, the Ministry also regularly submits posts that counter hoaxes at a dedicated page on its kominfo.go.id website.
