Indonesia has blocked the online prediction market Polymarket, just days after the site set up a betting market on whether President Prabowo Subianto would be removed from office before the end of his term.
In a statement on Friday, the Communications and Digital Ministry said that it had restricted access to the platform, which constituted a form of unregulated online gambling, the Jakarta Post reported.
“The government will not provide space for any form of online gambling in Indonesia,” Alexander Sabar, the director general of digital space supervision at the Ministry, said in a statement. He said that Polymarket and similar prediction markets “contain elements of monetary betting and speculation over uncertain events, making them violate prevailing laws and regulations in Indonesia.”
Sabar added that the ban was imposed in order to protect citizens, referencing similar bans by authorities in Singapore, Brazil, and India.
Gambling is not legal in Indonesia, but online gambling sites, many of them based offshore, have become a serious problem in recent years. Indonesians reportedly lost an estimated 327 trillion rupiah ($18.4 billion) gambling online in 2023, and the authorities have struggled to block access to the sites.
