For the fourth time in 15 months, Pakistan lifts the ban from TikTok

The government of Pakistan has once again lifted the ban on the Chinese video-sharing app Tiktok. After an assurance from Tiktok, Pakistan’s Media Regulatory Authority lifted the ban after four months. It has been assured by Tiktok that it will stop the spread of pornographic content on its app. This is the fourth time in the last 15 months that such a ban has been imposed and lifted by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.

Like the rest of the world, Tiktok is quite popular among Pakistani youth. Pakistan first banned this app in the country in October 2020. The ban on the app was imposed after complaints that alleged obscene content was spread through the app.

The Pakistani Regulatory Agency posted a message on Twitter. Statement It said that TikTok had assured Pakistan that it would block users uploading “illegal content”. Significantly, Tiktok has been downloaded about 39 million times in Pakistan. Tiktok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.

Press Release: PTA has restored the services of TikTok on assurances of the Platform to control immoral / indecent content.

— PTA (@PTAofficialpk) November 19, 2021

Pakistan’s ties with China are well known and it has been urging TikTok to develop an effective system to control illegal content in its app.

In the past few years, Pakistan has also sent hundreds of complaints to Facebook and Twitter regarding the content. It is alleged that their content is offensive and potentially insulting to Islam, which is against Pakistani law. In 2008, Pakistan banned YouTube for a video depicting Prophet Muhammad.

By the way, it will be interesting to see how long this ban is removed from Tiktok this time. There is little hope that strong steps will be taken by Tiktok to stop obscene content. In India too, Tiktok was banned last year.