Influencer Rachel Vennya on Sunday (5 September) shared an Instagram post about her experience receiving hate speech and slander from netizens on detikForum. She also posted more detailed information regarding the issue, sharing similar experience faced by other influencers. 

detikForum is an online space where people could open up any discussion about any topic, anonymously. However, this anonymity leads to the tendency of users sharing information irresponsibly, without fact-checking to determine whether the news is true or not. 

A thread titled ‘Sekuter’, shortened form of ‘Selebriti Kurang Terkenal’ (not-so-popular celebrities) is known as the reason why the issue emerges. In the thread, users uncover trivial yet detrimental information about almost every Indonesian influencer. This is known as doxing. 

Rachel couldn’t take it any longer, hence deciding to speak up and posted her concern. She said she has been experiencing this kind of defamation since 2018, to the point where she became traumatised and used to cry every day whenever she sees her name up on the forum. 

Another influencer Dwi Handayani shared that back in 2015, due to the cyberbullying she experienced on detikForum, she had a severe depression and was suicidal. 

Rachel has contacted Detik in regard to this issue, and Detik promised that it will assist her and other influencers to investigate all the people behind the anonymous accounts on its online forum. As its initial action, Detik deleted the thousands of pages thread.