Competition in Indonesia’s Digital Economy and the Regulation of Platform Dominance

Abstract

Digital platforms expand market access while acquiring the capacity to determine how other businesses reach consumers. This article examines how Indonesian competition law can address platform dominance without treating scale, data accumulation, or technological integration as infringements in themselves. It adopts normative legal research through statutory analysis, a purposive review of recent scholarship, and a functional comparison with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. An official-report-based illustration of the Google Play Billing proceedings connects the doctrinal analysis to Indonesian enforcement. The analysis identifies three distinct problems: translating platform conduct into existing statutory prohibitions, obtaining evidence capable of distinguishing exclusion from efficient intermediation, and designing preventive duties where case-specific enforcement may arrive too late. Existing provisions on monopoly, market control, restrictive agreements, and abuse of dominance provide substantial legal entry points. However, their application requires attention to interdependent platform sides, data-related entry barriers, switching costs, and the causal effects of contractual and algorithmic restrictions. The article proposes a sequenced assessment connecting legal basis, competitive mechanism, evidence, justification, and remedy. It further develops a differentiated reform agenda combining digital enforcement guidance, forensic capacity, coordinated data governance, and legislation authorising narrowly targeted obligations for designated platforms. Its contribution is an operational account of how Indonesia can preserve competitive access while respecting legality, proportionality, privacy, and innovation. The conclusions concern legal design; they do not establish the prevalence of anticompetitive conduct or quantify welfare effects in Indonesian digital markets.