The Pakistan telecommunication authority (PTA) on Wednesday again blocked the popular video-sharing App TikTok over its failure to remove ‘inappropriate content. PTA announced on Twitter:
“Press Release: In the light of relevant provisions of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016, PTA has blocked access to TikTok App and website in the country.
The Chinese application, owned by ByteDance, has also been banned in India due to security concerns. The (PTA) authority said in a brief statement that:
“The action has been taken due to continuous presence of inappropriate content on the platform and its failure to take such content down.”
PTA was asked to remove the application from circulation by the country’s judiciary on 28 June. A complaint was filed against the app by a citizen for spreading ‘immorality and obscenity.
Earlier, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) had suspended TikTok in March. The ban was lifted a few weeks later. In October 2020, the app was banned in Pakistan for the first time. However, the ban was lifted after just 10 days. In all four instances when the app was blocked, the government had concerns regarding the content shared on the application.
6 million videos were removed in the first quarter of 2021 in Pakistan. In the Pakistani market “TikTok removed 6,495,992 videos making it the second market to get the most videos removed after the USA. In the USA 8,540,088 videos were removed.
TikTok Pakistan’s latest transparency report said, covering January to March. Around 15 percent of the removed videos were “adult nudity and sexual activities”.
Though the App has a huge fan base in Pakistan, where people use it to market and sell goods online. But its critics say that it promotes vulgarity. In June, TikTok said it had removed more than six million videos available in just three months following the complaints from officials and ordinary users.
