Pakistan has decided to block the social media app TikTok for failing to filter “immoral” content, three senior government officials said on Friday. A formal announcement to this effect will be made in a few hours, officials said. While the move apparently follows in India’s footsteps to ban the viral short-video social media platform, the reasons appear to be different: In Pakistan, the decision to block TikTok does not appear to be driven by privacy concerns.
The ban comes after a ‘final warning’ from the country’s telecoms regulator in July against the explicit content of the Chinese app.
“We have been repeatedly asking them to put in place an effective mechanism to block immoral and indecent content,” said one of the senior officials directly involved in the decision. “The platform, however, has not been able to fully satisfy the Pakistani authorities. The decision has been made to block access to TikTok in Pakistan, ”he said.
However, the ban took hold of Twitter immediately and netizens showed various hilarious concerns through memes that made #TikTok one of the top trends of the day. While many drew a parallel between Pakistani TikTokers and Indian Tiktokers, others stepped out to praise the decision.
TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, has been engulfed in a firestorm globally due to security and privacy concerns. It has already been blocked in India and faces scrutiny in countries from Australia to the United States.
TikTok’s streak of misfortune stems from a wide variety of reasons, initially including lack of proper curation and quality control, and lately, privacy debates that have arisen as a result of supposedly close ties from its parent company, Bytedance. with the Chinese government.
In another early move to regulate its content, Pakistan had blocked access to Tinder and several other dating apps in an attempt to control “immoral” and “indecent” content, just days after regulators threatened to shut down YouTube for reasons Similar.
(with contributions from agencies)
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