The Indonesian government has blocked the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo after receiving complaints from citizens about pornographic and online gambling content appearing in its search results.
The move aligns with Indonesia’s cultural and religious values, where gambling is prohibited and pornography is considered morally unacceptable.
This action is consistent with Indonesia’s history of censoring content it deems inappropriate. The government has previously blocked numerous pornography sites, Reddit, and Vimeo, and has imposed temporary or partial restrictions on platforms like Tumblr, Telegram, TikTok, Netflix, and Badoo.
DuckDuckGo has confirmed the block to BleepingComputer, stating, “We can confirm that DuckDuckGo has been blocked in Indonesia due to their censorship policies. Unfortunately, there is no current path to being unblocked, similar to how we’ve been blocked in China for about a decade now.”
Interestingly, Google Search remains accessible in Indonesia. This suggests that Google either has effective self-censorship mechanisms in place for its local search engine or its significant presence makes blocking it too disruptive for internet usage in the country.
