The Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kominfo) is aggressively eradicating various kinds of online gambling and slot gambling content on all digital platforms, including social media content, websites and applications that access online gambling.
Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi also confirmed that 9,000 online gambling and slot sites had been blocked as of September 17 2023.
This is not the first attempt by the government in the war against online gambling. Based on the Kominfo report, from 2018 to July 2023 the government has blocked 846,047 online gambling sites in stages.
However, even though access has been cut off, online gambling sites or applications continue to appear under different names. The public can continue to access it easily.
This is possibly because online gambling sites can “disguise” themselves as official sites for certain institutions, for example banking, and there are even millions of gacor slot web pages (a type of slot gambling game) that “benchmark” on government and academic sites.
From January to July 2023, Kominfo found that there were 1,509 online gamblers infiltrating banking sites. Meanwhile, from January 1 2022 to February 13 2023, Kominfo noted that there were 683 government sites and educational institutions that were covered in online gambling advertisements.
As academics in the field of law, we try to analyze the reasons why online gambling is still widespread from a legal sociology perspective to find out what factors make individuals addicted to playing online gambling.
Based on the results of our interviews with a number of respondents, also followed by analytical observations regarding aspects of social phenomena, we found four main factors that could cause the continued increase in the number of online gambling perpetrators.
1. Economic factors
These economic factors include everything related to a person’s financial condition. People who have difficulty finding work or earning an income will eventually look for shortcuts to make a lot of money quickly and easily. This is very relevant to the current conditions of the world economic crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic has caused many people to lose their jobs and find it difficult to earn a living because there are very few job opportunities available. Many people feel hopeless and ultimately choose to gamble online because of the ease of access.
Another reason, and what makes them like it the most, is because they only need to spend a little capital, but the results they get can be many times greater.
2. Environmental factors
These environmental factors are not only about the place, but also a person’s social or social environment. More precisely, the environment in which a person lives will always influence how that person acts.
One of our sources stated that he had played online gambling on a social media platform as a result of invitations from his friends. Another source stated that he had also played online gambling due to curiosity that arose from seeing people around him who also played online gambling.
3. Opportunity factor
Chance is about how easy it is for someone to access online gambling sites. Just with a cellphone and the internet, anyone can play online gambling anywhere and anytime.
How to play it doesn’t seem difficult. The mass media has reported that according to the confessions of several gamblers, slot gambling is very simple and quite easy to play. Players only need to press the spin button on the machine displayed on the phone screen. The machine will then rotate and randomize various icon shapes, it is not known exactly what image will appear.
The machine will then stop spinning and if there are the same images and form a certain pattern, then the player wins.
4. Factor of lack of individual awareness
This lack of individual awareness more precisely refers to moral awareness and legal awareness.A person’s morals are related to his beliefs and the way he differentiates between right and wrong actions. Many people continue to gamble online even though they fully know that their actions are against morals and the law and are selfish because they prioritize their personal happiness or pleasure and do not care about the losses experienced by those closest to them such as their family.
On the one hand, the government should pay more attention to aspects of legal certainty regarding gambling regulations in Indonesian law so that they are in line with social values. Don’t forget to improve and equalize the economy so that people can live a decent life without having to think about finding sources of money through illegal activities.
On the other hand, the public must also participate in raising moral awareness so that they are willing to obey the law in order to help the government in eradicating online gambling crimes.
