Twitter's new handle X has been banned in Indonesia.
The social media platform's new owner Elon Musk has been busy rebranding the company with a new name - X - but the plan appears to have hit problems in Indonesia after the government blocked the use of the site X.com over fears it had previously been linked to online pornography and gambling - which are both restricted in the Muslim-majority country.
According to Al Jazeera, officials at Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Informatics said the name has previously been used by sites that "did not adhere to the country’s laws against negative content".
The publication reports ministry officials have been in touch with Twitter in a bid to clarify the nature of X.com. Currently it means Indonesia's 24 million Twitter users cannot access the social media platform.
However, Gatria Priyandita, a cyber policy analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera the ban may not last long, saying: "Given that Twitter can be freely used in Indonesia, I doubt removing X.com from the list of banned sites would be a great challenge, so long as Twitter can demonstrate that the domain name truly does direct to Twitter."
News of the rebranding came on Monday (24.07.23) when Musk declared he would be dropping the name Twitter and ditching the company's well known bird logo in favour of X.
Musk previously founded a financial services company called X.com and he also runs space exploration organisation Space X.
