The Indonesian Reporting Commission, shortened to the IReC, was a group that was formed by Muhammad Salim from Indonesia. The group was not an official representative of Indonesia, but it had gathered support from followers in mass-reporting other meme groups on Facebook that they felt were religiously offensive or racist. After getting certain groups banned, the IReC creator, Muhammad Salim, was eventually pressured into apologizing after a variety of other Facebook groups came together to resist the IReC.
KnowYourMeme has a detailed account of the situation, which started with a takedown of the Facebook page Crossovers Nobody Asked For (CNAF). The grup had more than 500,000 members but was removed on May 13th, 2019 following reports from the IReC. Additional attempts to revive the group or make spin-offs were also met with bans.
As noted in the KnowYourMeme piece, things didn’t finally begin to turn around until various meme groups came together in solidarity against the IReC in order to protect the sanctity of meme groups on Facebook.
Some of the groups worked together to eventually out the identity of the administrator of the IReC, which turned out to be none other than Muhammad Salim.
Whatever happened during that time prompted Salim to apologize for getting the meme groups banned on Facebook. He issued multiple apologies including one in English. On May 16th, 2019 Salim wrote…
“[…] as leader [and founder] of IReC, and with this letter, I apologize to everyone who become victim [of us] in time IReC’s still become a page.
“My reason for that wrongdoing was to delete or destroyed everything negative in Facebook, like, SARA [religious offensive jokes], hoax, and others, who break Facebook rules.
“Also, our motive to attack non-Indonesian group, like NSM and CNA, because [I found] some hate-speech or religious offensive jokes.
“I’m deeply sorry for what happened to everyone, and to our wrongdoings. I, as leader of IReC, will stop IReC’s operation, and we will take responsibility for everything happened.”
Salim also followed up the apology with a 14 minute video verbally acknowledging his wrongdoing and how he was sorry for getting various meme groups banned from Facebook. He also acknowledged that he wasn’t able to bring those banned groups back, but he was still remorseful for his actions.
As pointed out in the video, Salim and the Indonesian Reporting Commission have no attachment to the Indonesian government. Some people assumed that they did because the IReC sounds like an official government body, but it’s not.
In the video Salim is asked about some of the rumors that circulated, including that people had hounded him down and physically attacked him, but he denies that that happened, saying it was “a hoax”, and that when he heard people were trying to physically track him down he decided to stay at home until it boiled over.
He also reveals that the IReC page was operated by three people. He was the leader and two others helped with documentation and information gathering.
Salim stated that the three of them coordinated to report more than 68 different groups, both domestic and abroad.
There were plenty of people who were angered and frustrated about losing their groups, as well as people who felt that the IReC gave Indonesians a bad name, since having Western Facebook groups shut down by an organization going by Indonesian Reporting Commission led some people to believe that it was an officially sanctioned measure by the Indonesian government.
While the apology is a good gesture, there’s still going to be some people angered over the whole ordeal and the negative attention that Indonesia received in result of such antics. The good part is that at least the targeting of meme groups from the IReC has come to an end.
(Thanks for the news tip Aulia Raihan Hakim)
