“Indonesia Bans E-Commerce Transactions on Social Media” by Dewi Kurniawati and Stanley Widianto (The Star)

This article covers the banning and regulation of e-commerce on social media platforms in Indonesia; in other words, people can no longer purchase things from partners with social media websites, especially TikTok. Because TikTok, the popular short video app, has recently begun thriving from its “TikTok shop”, a place where anyone watching can purchase an item they see in a video. This move was made by the government, claiming that it will “protect offline merchants and marketplaces” within the large Southeast Asian economy and added that the prices of the items being sold on TikTok are threatening small businesses. A part of this regulation to note is that there will now be a minimum of $100 on items purchased from foreign nations and all items must “meet local standards”. Out of the 325 million TikTok users from Southeast Asia, over one-third of them are from Indonesia. Indonesia has also produced a very high e-commerce transaction net-worth of around $52 million (and about 5% of that came from TikTok). Something to note here also is that TikTok is a Chinese owned social media platform. 

This recent event in Indonesia is very relevant not only to the rest of the world today, but also to this class. TikTok is one of the largest social media platforms in use right now, especially by young people (including college students like us). TikTok shop has also been taking over the platform, with several videos being about products that were purchased through the shop or people talking about it in some way. I know I have seen many videos about TikTok shop and have even considered purchasing some things. Technology and social media (or just media in general) is something very important that we will look more into in this class as well because of its prevalence in this area of the world. I think that this specific event is very important both in the terms of this class and the terms of the world today because TikTok is an Asian-owned company and it can show us a lot about the relationships between Asia (or in this case China) and Southeast Asia (or in this case specifically Indonesia). While this article does not specifically state that China owning TikTok is a reason for this, it is possible that the relationship between Indonesia and China may have affected this ban/regulation. Looking at the bigger picture, in this class we will look at and have been looking at global flows within and outside of Southeast Asia and the use of TikTok shop shows us how this has been happening and is being put to a stop. Overall, this event is very relevant to this class because it shows us the relationship between Indonesia and social media, as well as how they are handling worldly affairs. 

Source: https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2023/09/27/indonesia-bans-e-commerce-transactions-on-social-media