A spokeswoman for Twitter said the company was not prepared to comment on the Indonesian government's initiatives, adding that it engages with governments as required. "We have dedicated government and law enforcement reporting channels for illegal content," she said in an emailed response.

A country of 260 million people and Southeast Asia's largest economy, Indonesia is a prolific user of social media and boasts more than 90 million Facebook users. Rudiantara's warning comes amid a crackdown in Indonesia on the use of social media to publish fake news and hate speech.

Both Malaysia and Singapore unveiled plans to tackle fake news last month.

The communications minister said he had contacted Facebook representatives in Indonesia to seek assurances that no Indonesian user's data was among the cache harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Facebook indicated it would respond this week to his request, he said.

Australia's Information and Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, confirmed on March 20 his office had also sought to clarify with Facebook "whether any personal information of Australians was involved" in the scandal.

Along with other social media platforms that fail to comply with a 2016 decree on the protection of personal information, Facebook could face severe penalties, said Rudiantara, who like many Indonesians uses one name. "There are administrative sanctions. I can issue the warning letter to them. There will also be criminal sanctions," he said.

Facebook employees could face up to 12 years in jail and a fine of up to 12 billion rupiah ($1.1 billion), he said. "I want an undertaking that there were no Indonesian Facebook users whose information or data was used by Cambridge Analytica," he said. "If that is the case, I can chase them, ask the police."

Loading

The comments come as President Joko Widodo is set to seek re-election in a campaign that begins in September ahead of the first round of voting in April next year. Widodo, known as Jokowi, is himself an avid user of social media with almost 10 million Twitter followers. He has also been the target of hoaxes, including having to fend off claims he is a communist.

The communications minister said he's worried about the potential for domestic and external forces using personal information obtained via social media to target individual voters in Indonesia's elections. He's also concerned about the use of social media to spread fake news as a way of exerting influence over the electorate, as it did in the 2016 US poll.

Loading

"I have to watch out, whether it's internal from within the country or outside of the country," Rudiantara said. "But the most important thing is we have to look at controls for platforms."

Social media was already being used to spread fake news and influence the elections, he said, citing a post on Twitter that claimed he and Widodo had conspired with Chinese President Xi Jinping to win the next election. Rudiantara denies the claim.

The communications minister said he has a simple message for Facebook and other social media companies: "If you are not able to manage your platform to support the stability of Indonesia that means your intention to be in Indonesia is not for business, it's for something else."

Bloomberg