The government shut down the messenger of Whatsapp and social media, i.e. Facebook and Instagram on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019.
I couldn't access all of them. I knew from the twitter's trending topic (it wasn't shut down) that displayed the hashtag #whatsappdown and I assumed that Facebook and Instagram also had the same situation, because all of them are in the same management.
The news on tv confirmed that, too.
What was the meaning of that?
In my opinion, it meant that the government thought that most of the Indonesian people are not wise enough, not smart enough to differentiate between hoax and factual news in the internet.
Irony?
Of course, it is an irony if the government thought like that.
It is the time for us, not to blame the government
We should not blame the government if it blocked Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram.
We have to admit that we are too easy to accept the "truth" of the online news, not only from the social media, but also from websites and blogs.
We have to realize our weaknesses and move on, improve our consideration, to be able to differentiate which ones are hoaxes and which ones are facts.
In my opinion, there are three effective ways to protect us from hoax.