DuckDuckGo search engine blocked in Indonesia due to user complaints about search results

The Indonesian government has blocked privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo following numerous citizen complaints about links to content related to pornography and online gambling in its search results. In Indonesia, gambling is banned and porn is considered morally unacceptable.

Image source: duckduckgo.com

«We can confirm that DuckDuckGo is blocked in Indonesia due to their censorship policies. Unfortunately, at the moment there is no way to unblock it, just as we have been blocked in China for about ten years,” DuckDuckGo told BleepingComputer. However, the Google Search search engine is still available in the country.

In January 2024, Indonesia announced it would block almost 600,000 gambling websites, as well as 5,000 bank accounts linked to them. Even earlier, the country’s government blocked many porn sites, Reddit and Vimeo portals, and also introduced temporary or partial restrictions on the functioning of Tumblr, Telegram, TikTok, Netflix and Badoo.

Image source: Kominfo

In the future, the Indonesian government plans to block free VPNs that the population uses to bypass blocking. This was announced by Indonesian Minister of Communications and Information Budi Arie Setiadi (pictured above) on July 31, emphasizing that gamers are using free VPN tools to access blocked online gambling portals.