Elon Musk’s X in trouble? Indonesia raps X.com under pornography laws

Indonesia blocks X.com, the new domain of Elon Musk’s microblogging platform, over online pornography concerns.

Many users on Twitter have opined that X.com resembles a porn site domain. (Express image)

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Elon Musk’s X in trouble? Indonesia raps X.com under pornography laws

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Questionable as the new name is, Elon Musk’s rebranding of the platform he owns to ‘X’ has now gotten the site banned in Indonesia under the country’s tight regulation on online pornography.

According to an Al Jazeera report, Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Informatics banned the domain because it had previously been used by “negative” sites that fell outside of government regulations. The Ministry has now reached out to X to gain a better understanding of the site.

“Earlier today, we spoke with representatives from Twitter and they will send a letter to us to say that X.com will be used by Twitter,” said Usman Kansong, the director general of information and public communication at the ministry.

Also read | Elon Musk took over @X handle without paying the man who owned it for 16 years: Report

The report says that the 24 million or so users in the country can no longer access the site. This is not an isolated incident, however, as Indonesia has previously taken similar actions against other sites. For instance, in 2022, the authorities demanded that platforms like Netflix, Google, Instagram, and Facebook remove any “content deemed unlawful, or that ‘disturbs public order’”.

But the problem may also stem from the choice of branding itself — many users on Twitter have noted how X.com resembles a porn site’s domain. The change was also rather messy. Both X’s sites and apps are yet to fully remove signs of their former branding.

Elon has grand plans for the microblogging platform, though. He wants to turn it into an “everything” app with features for messaging, payments, and videos built-in.