19 SEP 2026 — Indonesia has settled on what it will charge a global platform that fails its child-safety rules: six per cent of worldwide revenue.
An Indonesian medium-sized company breaking the same rules faces a maximum of Rp10bn, about US$568,000. The two numbers are not meant to be comparable, and the gap between them is the policy.
What the fines would be
The Communication and Digital Affairs Ministry has finalised the formula, ANTARA reported on 14 September. Foreign platforms are exposed to six per cent of global revenue. Domestic operators face tiered ceilings by company size: Rp1bn for micro enterprises, Rp5bn for small, Rp10bn for medium.
Money is not the only sanction, and on the evidence so far it may not be the effective one. The ladder starts with written warnings, moves through administrative fines to feature suspensions, and ends with blocking the platform's domain inside Indonesia.
Minister Meutya Hafid framed the formula as an enforcement instrument rather than a revenue measure: "Naturally, we do not wish to resort to this, we hope that these platforms will make tangible changes."
Two very different ceilings
Six per cent of global revenue is European-scale. It is the shape of penalty the EU wrote into its own platform rules. It works by making the fine proportional to the company rather than to the market where the breach happened.
The domestic ceilings work the opposite way. Rp10bn is an absolute cap that does not scale with anything, and for a medium-sized Indonesian firm it is a serious but survivable number.
The asymmetry is deliberate. The instrument is built for eight named foreign platforms; the domestic tiers exist so the rule is not written solely against foreigners. Whether a percentage-of-global-revenue penalty survives contact with a company that has no Indonesian revenue to speak of is a question the formula does not answer.
The rule has been live since March
The underlying regulation is not new. PP Tunas — Government Regulation No. 17 of 2025 on electronic system governance for child protection — took effect on 28 March 2026, restricting children's accounts on platforms judged high risk.
Compliance on day one was poor. Of the eight platforms named — YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, X, Bigo Live and Roblox — only X and Bigo Live were assessed as fully compliant. TikTok and Roblox were partly compliant. Facebook, Threads, Instagram and YouTube were not.
Six months of that is the context. A rule in force that four of eight named platforms were ignoring is an argument for enforcement machinery, and September's announcement supplies it.
Not yet a regulation
The formula is agreed, not enacted. It has cleared public consultation and been communicated to operators. The ministry has sent the draft to the Finance Ministry to be codified as a non-tax state revenue instrument.
Until that lands, six per cent is a stated intention. No platform can be fined under a formula that has not completed its legal passage, and no date has been given for when it will.
What has to happen next
Codification is the near-term marker. The Finance Ministry's treatment decides whether this becomes an enforceable schedule or remains a published position. That step is procedural rather than political.
The first use will tell more than the formula does. A penalty of this shape is tested by the company it is applied to first, and the sequence matters: warning, fine, suspension, blocking. Indonesia has blocked platforms before, which makes the last rung credible in a way it is not everywhere.
The wider thing to watch is the regional pattern. Malaysia is building age verification on its national digital identity, the Philippines has been withholding its own department's budget over child-safety answers, and Indonesia has now put a number on non-compliance. Three approaches to the same problem, and none of them is waiting for the others.
