The Pakistani government has banned Chinese social media app TikTok.
TikTok is the Chinese social media app that creates a lot of good and entertaining funs. It is owned by China-based ByteDance
According to Pakistani telecommunications authority, government, TikTok was banned for failing to filter out “immoral and indecent” content.
Pakistan took this decision after a number of complaints from different sections of the society. This was stated by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said in a statement on Friday.
Pakistan is a conservative country.
Telecommunication Authority stated:
“Keeping in view the complaints and nature of the content being consistently posted on TikTok, PTA issued a final notice to the application,” the statement said.
“However, the application failed to fully comply with the instructions. Therefore, directions were issued for blocking of TikTok application in the country.”
PTA said TikTok has been informed the regulator is open to engagement. And will review its decision subject to a satisfactory mechanism by TikTok to moderate unlawful contents.
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However, in July, the regulator issued a “final warning” to the short-form video app. The warning was over explicit content posted on the platform.
TikTok has been caught in a firestorm globally due to security and privacy concerns. It has already been blocked in India and it faces scrutiny in countries from Australia to the United States.
Meanwhile, TikTok was not immediately reachable for comment on the matter.
Moreover, the decision to ban TikTok was taken after Prime Minister Imran Khan became interested in the issue. This was stated by a government official to the Reuters news agency.
Banning of TikTok comes months after live-streaming app Bigo Live was banned for the same reason. And video-sharing platform YouTube was warned to block “vulgarity and hate speech”.
Dating app Tinder has also been blocked in recent months by Pakistani authorities.
In 2016, Pakistan’s parliament passed the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) to regulate, among other things, content on the internet.
This Act gave the PTA broad powers to block content considered to be against “the glory of Islam or the integrity. Security or defence of Pakistan or public order, decency or morality”.
Notwithstanding, Rights groups said PTA had blocked more than 800,000 websites and platforms from being accessed within the country.
Nevertheless, the list of blocked websites includes pornographic platforms. But news outlets considered critical of the country’s security and foreign policies were also banned.
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Many social media, and some political parties’ websites were all banned.
It should be noted that in Northwestern Pakistan public libraries are scarce. Most civic initiative brings books to barbershops to promote reading.
However, a lot of people are arguing that this move should not be in this modern world. Should this laws be reversed or are the bans okay.
