After facing the axe from countries like India and the USA, TikTok has been banned in Pakistan for completely different reasons. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has banned the short video platform in the region for failing to take down content that it deemed ‘immoral and indecent’.
The PTA stated in a press release, “In view of number of complaints from different segments of the society against immoral and indecent content on the video-sharing application TikTok, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has issued instructions for blocking of the application.”
In the press release, the regulatory body says that it gave an ample amount of time to the ByteDance owned platform to ‘respond and comply with the Authority instructions for the development of an effective mechanism for proactive moderation of unlawful online content’.
However, all is not for the ultra popular short video platform. TikTok has been informed by the PTA that it is open for an engagement at the moment and if TikTok establishes a ‘satisfactory mechanism to moderate unlawful content’ then the authority will review its decision.
The Authority has mentioned that it received numerous complaints regarding the nature of content that is shared on TikTok and therefore issued a warning to the company in July. TikTok had responded to the warning saying, it removed over 3.7 million videos in the second half of 2019 that violated its policies in Pakistan.
Last month, TikTok notified in a transparency report that it removed 104 million videos in the first half of 2020 that violated its policies, which included 37 million videos from India alone.
Pakistan’s neighbor, India had banned TikTok along with 58 other apps in June citing probable violations of the country’s sovereignty and security. Donald Trump in the USA issued an executive order against the app as well, over concerns of national security. However, there is chance for the app to make a comeback in the US with the latest TikTok-Oracle-Walmart deal to form ‘TikTok Global’ (read more here).
