Indonesians allege social media posts on wildfires and haze are being censored
JAKARTA — On Oct. 15, as thick smog continued to choke millions of people, Indonesian health policy research and advocacy organization the Nalar Rawat Institute shared a post on TikTok and Instagram about the health effects of the country’s wildfires. Little did it know what problems the innocuous posts would create. The TikTok post featured […]
Indonesians claim that social media posts concerning wildfires and haze are being censored. On October 15, the Nalar Rawat Institute, an Indonesian health policy research and advocacy organization, posted a video on TikTok and Instagram about the health impacts of the country’s wildfires. The video featured NASA satellite images of carbon monoxide covering the Indonesian archipelago, overlaid with footage of an orange sky in Palangka Raya, a city in Central Kalimantan province, which has been severely affected by months of wildfires and haze in 2026.
The post stated that the air pollution index in Central Kalimantan reached 1,200, four times the hazardous threshold of 300, based on data from the Ministry of Environment on October 14. The post garnered significant attention, accumulating 500,000 views and 17,500 likes. However, shortly after, the post was removed from TikTok, according to a notice received by the NGO.
Fatus Sahara, the NGO's communications officer, informed that TikTok notified them on the evening of October 15 that the post violated their community guidelines. The following day, the post disappeared, and the NGO's attempt to reinstate it was denied.
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