"Currently, around 40 thousand links selling imported used clothes have been taken down. In future, e-commerce and social e-commerce monitoring will be conducted," the ministry's acting director general of consumer protection and commerce, Moga Simatupang, noted.
Simatupang made the statement during a press conference after the Content Handling Coordination Meeting and the Sale of Imported Illegal Used Clothing Through E-Commerce, Market Place, Social Commerce, and Social Media in Jakarta on Thursday.
He also noted that sellers of imported used clothes on e-commerce and social e-commerce platforms employed several tactics to avoid revocation of products, such as changing their product names.
"Once it has been taken down, it can appear again in a different name. We need help from the e-commerce team to handle this," Simatupang stated.
On the same occasion, Head of Logistics at the Indonesian E-Commerce Association (IDEA), Even Alex Chandra, explained that the 40 thousand links selling imported used clothes were from all IDEA members: Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia, Tiktok, BliBli, and Meta.
"We will carry out manual investigations and use artificial intelligence (AI) to take down the links. However, we are also asking for help from the Trade Ministry to give us the list of the links then we will take it down," he revealed.
After elimination of the illegal products, Chandra admitted that the number of products being sold was decreasing, albeit some were still selling them. He noted that the sellers have various modes to avoid revocation of their products, such as changing the keywords to product photos.
"In the early weeks, the sellers used the word 'ball' to promote their products, and we were able to eliminate it. Now, they changed the keyword with a different word. Our team must keep looking," he stated.
In addition, product photos that earlier used images of sack clothes have currently been replaced with individual cloth photos. The word "used" was then changed to "preloved," so the e-commerce team had to search manually while coordinating with the relevant ministries, he explained. Related news: Minister seeks solution to illegal imports of used clothing
Related news: Ministries destroy illegally imported used clothes worth Rp80 bln
Translator: Kuntum Khaira R, Resinta S
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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