PIKIRAN RAKYAT - The Chairman of the Indonesia Digital Empowering Community (iDiec), Tesar Sandikapura, predicts that the mass layoffs done by Tokopedia might cause other concerns.

Tokopedia's decision to carry out mass layoffs was only a matter of time following the merger with ByteDance that have TikTok.

"Actually, I had already predicted that the Tokopedia and TikTok merger would result in this situation. And as it turns out, my prediction was correct. The government should have noticed that the merger between TikTok Shop and Tokopedia should not have been allowed from the start," said Tesar in his statement on Sunday, June 23, 2024.

Tesar also mentioned that this concern can potentially lead to monopolistic and duopolistic practices, as two companies merge or one company acquires another in the same sector.

"That's what puzzled me yesterday, why were they allowed to do this?" he said.

Besides layoffs, Tesar expressed concerns about the need to be wary of personal data protection for users. He pointed out that TikTok, which is owned by the Bytedance group, is a tech giant from China.

According to him, the developer of TikTok Shop and Tokopedia will be able to read the platform users and important data such as consumer shopping behavior.

“They will control the data, especially since it's said that their data centers are overseas, we need to address this. Given the current situation, the government has already gotten involved," he explained.

Therefore, Tesar called on all parties to immediately consider the steps to be taken following these layoffs. Concerns such as the security of data (seller-buyer) should not be exploited for foreign’s interests.

"We should not allow foreign parties to take advantage of this, thus forcing their products to become the (best selling) winner in Indonesia. This is what we fear, that local players will lose out. Regulations need to be considered carefully in order to prevent such incidents from reocurring once more, so that big players do not become even stronger by 'swallowing' others," he said.

Recently, Tokopedia has announced the layoff of amount 450 employees as a follow-up to the merger with TikTok in January 2024.*** (Politeknik Negeri Bandung/Yeurley Arba Nabila)