Indonesia’s Online Gambling Crackdown Is Working — Except for 200,000 Children

Indonesia’s two-year war on illegal online gambling has wiped out roughly 6.6 million adult players and crashed quarterly transaction volumes by more than half. Then, this week, the country’s communications minister stepped in front of a Medan forum and admitted that 200,000 children — including about 80,000 under age 10 — had been exposed to those same platforms anyway.

Inside the warning Indonesia issued in Medan

The figure came from Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs, known locally as Komdigi. Speaking at a public forum on combating online gambling, Minister Meutya Hafid described the exposure of children as one of the most alarming social consequences of the country’s ongoing illegal gambling boom — locally referred to as judol.

The breakdown matters as much as the headline number. Of the roughly 200,000 minors the ministry has detected interacting with online gambling, around 80,000 are under the age of 10. The remainder are concentrated in the 11–19 age range, an age band that earlier PPATK reporting had tied to Rp 293 billion in gambling deposits across 2.2 million transactions in 2024 alone.

“Online gambling is a scam with a system designed to ensure players almost always lose. We are not only shutting down access or carrying out takedowns. The most important thing is reaching the wider public with these facts so that awareness grows from within families and communities.”
— Meutya Hafid, Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs, Medan forum, May 13, 2026

The half of the crackdown that is working

What makes the child-exposure number so jarring is how aggressively the rest of the picture has improved. Indonesia’s Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) recorded a collapse in active online gamblers across 2025, with the population shrinking from roughly 9.7 million participants in 2024 to about 3.1 million the following year. That is a reduction of about 68% in twelve months — and our deeper reporting on the country’s wider gambling crackdown has tracked the operational changes that drove it.

The money trail tells the same story. Quarterly transaction value in Q3 2025 stood at roughly Rp155 trillion — around US$9.27 billion — a 57% year-over-year fall. Across the full year, PPATK figures show overall transaction volumes shrinking sharply and total deposits compressing from earlier highs.

The enforcement machine behind those numbers

That dual collapse — fewer players, smaller flows — did not happen on its own. It came from a multi-agency apparatus involving Komdigi, the Financial Services Authority (OJK), PPATK, the national police and, more recently, the banking sector itself.

The bank-account freezes are perhaps the most consequential lever. OJK has required commercial banks to apply enhanced due diligence to flagged customers and, in early 2026, revoked the licenses of six rural banks tied to suspect transaction patterns.

“OJK has requested banks to carry out enhanced due diligence or blocking of 33,252 accounts.”
— Dian Ediana Rae, OJK Chief Executive of Banking Supervision

On the digital side, Komdigi has logged the removal of more than 2.1 million pieces of gambling-related content from Indonesian-accessible surfaces — 1.93 million from websites, almost 98,000 from file-sharing platforms, and around 94,000 from Meta’s apps. In November 2025, when the ministry took down a single batch of about 10,000 illegal sites, it found that more than three-quarters of them were hiding behind Cloudflare to rotate IP addresses faster than blocks could land. The standoff has continued into 2026, with Komdigi summoning Cloudflare over its role.

Behind the scenes, the picture is messier than the headline numbers suggest. Earlier this year, prosecutors moved against officials inside Komdigi itself, with a corruption case reaching the ministry’s senior ranks — a reminder that the bureaucratic agencies running the takedowns are themselves under pressure.

How 200,000 children fell through anyway

If the apparatus is this active, how did a population the size of a mid-sized Indonesian city — most of them not even old enough for high school — end up exposed?

The mechanics line up against young users in three specific ways.

The advertising layer is where the failure is most visible to parents. Hafid singled out the four large platforms by name and asked them to take more proactive action against gambling content, arguing that takedowns alone cannot keep up with the volume. The marketing pattern — pushing low-cost, high-frequency play to young, low-income users — mirrors the kind of behaviour responsible-gaming advocates have spent the past two years documenting in other markets, including critiques of how some operators have borrowed an advertising playbook reminiscent of Big Tobacco’s approach to young users.

The infrastructure problem connects further upstream. Indonesia’s money-laundering exposure to offshore gambling sites has given the platforms hosting illegal operators a financial incentive to stay one step ahead of blocking — including using mainstream CDN services to hide their origin.

What officials are demanding next

Within 48 hours of Hafid’s warning, the political response had already expanded. The People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) framed child exposure as a national-character issue rather than a regulatory one.

“Preventing children and teenagers from being exposed to online gambling must be carried out collectively and comprehensively.”
— Lestari Moerdijat, MPR Deputy Speaker, Jakarta, May 15, 2026

Moerdijat called for large-scale digital literacy programmes targeting both children and parents, alongside firmer enforcement against gambling syndicates and counselling and psychosocial rehabilitation services for affected families. From the House of Representatives, Commission III member Rudianto Lallo turned the same data into a sharper demand for executive action.

“There are 200,000 teenagers exposed to judol. I think the government should not be silent, but should take steps to prevent and take action, of course.”
— Rudianto Lallo, House Commission III member

Behind both calls is the recognition that the existing playbook — block sites, freeze accounts, take down ads — has driven adult-side metrics down sharply but has not produced equivalent protection for minors. Indonesia is not alone in confronting this gap. Other jurisdictions have responded by capping promotion itself, as France did when it limited operator ad spending, rather than relying solely on enforcement after the fact.

Whether Indonesia moves toward harder restrictions on platform advertising, age-verified payment rails, or a school-and-community programme on the scale Moerdijat described, the next phase of the crackdown is now defined less by transaction graphs and more by the 200,000-child gap inside them.

Sources

• Nearly 200,000 Indonesian children exposed to online gambling — ANTARA News (Indonesian state news agency)
• MPR urges broad action against child online gambling — ANTARA News
• Minister urges stronger protection as 200,000 kids exposed to gambling — ANTARA News Jawa Timur
• Indonesia says nearly 200,000 children exposed to online gambling — Asia Gaming Brief
• 200 Thousand Children Exposed to Judol: Government Should Not Hesitate, Take Immediate Action! — VOI
• Indonesia sees 20% drop in online gambling turnover in 2025 — Sigma World (PPATK data)
• Indonesia Freezes 33,000 Accounts in Online Gambling Crackdown — World Casino Directory (OJK data)