We strongly agree with this motion regretting the increasing number of influencers in Indonesia.

The
number of influencers has grown a lot on social media, especially influencers who focus on things
that have political elements and dangerous promotions.

Our view of this motion is based on the rise of buzzer influencers on social media. With the
increasing number of buzzers, this is considered dangerous because it is proven to be able to disrupt
state sovereignty, divide community unity, and lead public opinion to hate the government, even in
some cases this has led to people hating and losing trust in the government.

So, the way buzzers work, they use social media and use these social media to disseminate
information. They will create fake personas from hundreds of accounts they manage. Then they will
give messages that entice their followers, praise clients who pay them or insult certain figures.
Buzzers are very dangerous when it comes to defamation of the government, false information
disseminated by buzzer influencers is usually exaggerated and deviates from the truth. These buzzer
influencers will not stop until they succeed in inciting their target to hate and doubt the
government’s performance. When people begin to doubt or even hate the government, this will
have a great opportunity to destroy the sovereignty of the state, disrupt the internal unity of the
community, and unbalance the government because people who lose trust in the government can
do things that are beyond normal limits.

Some examples are buzzer influencers with Instagram accounts @knowledgethatyouthneed,

@unexplained, @wrongarea, @scaryjoirnal, and so on. These accounts post things related to
political propaganda, where the propaganda tends to oppose government policies and ends up
leading public opinion to negative perspectives and public incitement to hate and doubt the
government.

Specific examples include the @knowledgethatyouthneed account which posts photos of graffiti art
criticizing the government’s incompetence in dealing with the pandemic, which has had an impact
on state finances and inflated debt. In addition, there are also many posts that are fabricated about
the government’s incompetence and various government vices (which again of course is just a
prearranged thing, and just a lie.) to manipulate thoughts and influence behavior and erode people’s
trust in the government.

There are also another form of buzzer influencers, namely the account of comic influencers who
work as political buzzers and artists at the same time. One example is the account with the
username @kertas.kindew, through his account, he publishes his comics that contain elements of
inciting thought and contain unfounded criticism of the government. This account is considered
dangerous because the comics are presented in an attractive manner, so that it attracts the interest
of readers from all different age followers.

According to data reported by CNN in the second half of this year, there was a surge in the number
of buzzer influencers who allegedly incited the public to doubt the government’s performance. In
connection with this, Kompas also reported that buzzer influencers who are engaged in the political
sphere are known to be the cause of problems in several cases against the government.

Apart from these reasons, there is also another reason why we agree to this motion. Influencers
mostly over-promote something. This can have many negative impacts such as consumptive public
behavior, promotion of products that are actually not very useful to become very popular products
in the community, raise unhealthy lifestyle standards, and lead to the phenomenon of panic buying.
Based on data reported in many mainstream media, at the beginning of the year and the second half
of this year, there were panic buying events of UC 1000 vitamin supplement drinks and masks. This
also leads to the scarcity of these products, resulting in an increase in product prices which are very
different from the market price. This is very dangerous because it occurs during a pandemic when
many people need masks.

Not only those things, over-promotion can lead to an increase in unhealthy lifestyles in society
because of the consumptive nature that is triggered by the over-promotion. According to psychology
and Glasglow university lecturers, they found that out of nine weight management lifestyles
promoted by influencers, only one was correct. In addition, based on a report from BBC news, the
increasing number of depression during the pandemic is also mostly caused by influencers. Based on
this data, influencers mostly post their "too extravagant" lifestyle and seem too luxurious so that it is
then considered an "ideal standard of living" for the community. This then contributes to the main
cause of people feeling depressed because they think that their standard of living is still very low,
this is also closely related to the pandemic, where people's incomes have decreased drastically due
to the pandemic. This is what was later reported as the mastermind or the main cause in several
mainstream media related to the spike in cases of depression to suicide in the midst of this
pandemic.