Criminalisation often occurs in developing countries in the Global South due to regulatory ambiguity and reckless law enforcement practices that breach human rights. This chapter contributes to a deeper understanding of how these practices in Southeast Asia pose a threat to the democratic rights of their citizens. These are issues seldom addressed in criminology, dominated by the domestic issues of Anglosphere countries such as the UK and the USA. This bias in the focus of criminological knowledge is now well documented (Aliverti et al., Punishment Soc 23(3):297–316. https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211020585 , 2021; Aas, Theor Criminol 16(1):5–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480611433433 , 2012; Carrington et al., Br J Criminol 56(1):1–20. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv083 , 2016; The Palgrave handbook of criminology and the global south. Palgrave, 2018; Dal Santo and Sepúlveda Penna, Southernising criminology. Challenges, horizons and praxis. Routledge, pp 13–46, 2024; Travers, Int J Comp Appl Crim Just 43(1):1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2017.1394337 , 2019; Van Swaaningen, Cultural bias in international criminology. In: Pontell H (ed) Oxford research encyclopedia of criminology. OUP. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.669 , 2021). Our chapter presents an overview and critique of the way criticism of the powerful by activists and citizens is increasingly regulated through the offense of insult or defamation in electronic media. Victims of criminalisation are generally activists, students, oppositionists and ordinary people accused of defamation through information technology. This issue of regulations and law enforcement practices poses a threat and paradox to developing guarantees of civil liberties. Amnesty International Indonesia’s report from 2014 to 2022 recorded more than 200 victims of arrests on charges of defamation and insult using the Information and Electronic Transactions Law (IET). Eighty percent of these cases end in court with prison sentences and fines (The Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet)). This chapter will discuss how criminalisation and punishment in Indonesia are carried out with the offense of defamation and insults via electronic means. It concludes by comparing how the citizens of Malaysia and Singapore fare in relation to attempts to free speech through social media.