Tumblr blocked in Indonesia for providing people in Muslim-majority country with access to porn

The site has long had a relatively liberal approach to adult pictures and videos

General view of atmosphere at Tumblr's Year In Review 2014 at Brooklyn Night Bazaar on December 10, 2014 in New York City (Rob Kim/Getty Images for Tumblr)

Tumblr has been banned in Indonesia for providing people with access to pornographic content.

The communications ministry said the block – which means nobody in the country can access the blogging platform – came after complaints about hundreds of accounts that provided pornography.

The country has stepped up efforts to police the kind of content available online. It has been trying to stem a rise in hoax stories and hate speech, and anti-pornography laws pushed by Islamic parties in the country have led tens of thousands of adult websites to be taken offline.

Tumblr, one of the world's biggest social networks, has long had a relatively liberal approach to pornographic videos and pictures. The site has instituted special protections to require people to sign up and confirm they are adults before accessing such content, but it is still freely available on the site.

Indonesia's communications ministry told Tumblr on 28 February that it needed to "clean its platform" of pornographic content within two days, Noor Iza, a spokesman for the ministry, said in a text message.

It then blocked eight Tumblr domain names on Monday after he said it had not received a response.

Indonesia has tough anti-pornography laws and the ministry said it had received complaints about pornographic contents on more than 360 accounts.

Tumblr, which is part of Verizon's Oath business, which also includes Yahoo and AOL, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

According to the site's community guidelines, any sexual or adult-oriented content should be flagged as "Not Suitable for Work" to warn users of the material.

Indonesia blocked more than 70,000 sites displaying "negative" content such as pornography or militant ideology in January with a system using 44 computer servers to help purge the internet of material deemed harmful, the communications minister said in an interview last month.

Authorities also threatened last year to block Facebook Inc's WhatsApp Messenger, which is widely used in the country, unless graphics interchange format (GIF) images provided by third parties were removed.

Authorities had blocked access to some channels on encrypted messaging service Telegram last year, saying it had several forums that were "full of radical and terrorist propaganda".

Additional reporting by agencies