Online gambling, which has recently been widely reported in the media, drove Vindaniar Yuristamanda Putri, S.I.A., M.M., a lecturer at the Financial and Banking Administration study program of the Vocational Education Program of Universitas Indonesia (UI), to educate the public in accordance to Vindaniar’s scientific background. Moreover, Drone Emprit, an artificial intelligence-based media monitoring company, published that Indonesia is number one in the world as the country with the most online gamblers this year, reaching around 201,122 people.
According to her, online gambling has become increasingly rampant due to massive numbers of advertising and ease for people to access the online gambling platform. Even though it doesn’t appear directly on everyone’s page, online gambling advertisements keep showing up by following internet users’ algorithms.
“For example, if someone were to look for information regarding online gambling in search engines, then online gambling advertisements could potentially come up in their social media. These advertisements also do not explicitly show online gambling. With attractive visuals and animations, these advertisements attract people to sign into the application and play without realizing that these games are counted as gambling,” said Vindaniar.
She added that, according to Article 303 of the Civil Code, gambling is a forbidden game due to the fact that winning or gaining profits from it only depends on luck. Just like games that provide a pleasant effect for their users, online gambling is also like that.
“The pattern of events is almost the same, where, initially, the player always wins and gets multiple profits. This is until, at one point, the player gets addicted and spends all of their assets to play online gambling. This is what causes economic issues for the public to psychological issues for the players,” said Vindaniar.
According to her, one of the early factors driving someone to do online gambling is the psychological factor, such as curiosity. Gamblers start out as being curious, and after receiving a significant amount of profits, they get addicted and keep increasing their gambling funds. Meanwhile, other factors include economics.
Online gamblers are usually lower middle-class society trying to gain additional income from online gambling. However, online gambling is a systemic game that allows players to gain big profits at the start, only to find out that the losses they could suffer afterward are immeasurable.
In the first quarter of 2024, based on the findings of the Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK), the turnover of funds in online gambling has reached 600 trillion rupiahs. This number increased rapidly from the total turnover funds in 2023, which is 327 trillion rupiahs. Based on these numbers, it can be concluded that the turnover funds in online gambling is massive. These funds are collected from players to small bookmakers, both from transfers to digital wallets. Then, these small bookies will send the funds to bigger bookmakers.
Vindaniar stated, “To cover up these gambling practices, bookmakers borrow others’ accounts to collect funds from players. This also allows for bookmakers to run away with the players’ money to other countries and makes it difficult for the Indonesia Financial Services Authority (OJK) to trace the transactions that occur.”
The low level of financial literacy among Indonesian people is still one of the triggers for this phenomenon. Increasing financial literacy in the form of community empowerment must continue to be carried out at every level of society.
“Financial literacy must be supported by every party, whether it is the government, academics, or public figures. The government, as policymakers, must be able to act faster in eradicating these online gambling practices. Starting from closing the platforms to prevent the public from accessing them to taking firm actions against all online gambling bookmakers and admins,” said Vindaniar.
The negative impacts of online gambling are varied. Online gamblers, economically, will experience significant financial loss, even to the point of bankruptcy. Not a few of them become stuck in massive debts from gambling. Other impacts include increasing poverty and crime rates. Thus, this practice will produce a snowball effect on various environments.
In addition, online gambling will trigger addiction for the players. Without realizing it, they can spend a lot of time just gambling. No less important, online gambling also carries the risk of data theft and fraud.
Vindaniar appealed to the public to not be tempted by instant money-making practices. One of the easiest characteristics of financial crimes to identify is promising profits in a short time. Vindaniar also invites the public to start paying attention to their financial management. Fund allocation can be done starting from daily needs for a month, bill payments and installments, allocation for savings, emergency funds, to investments in legal securities instruments such as stocks, bonds, or mutual funds.
“If a person’s income does not yet allow for investment, then it does not need to be forced. People should have savings and emergency funds before they invest in anything. This financial literacy must always be echoed so that Indonesian society can avoid illegal actions, such as online gambling, which only has a negative impact on every perpetrator,” he said.
