Pakistan bans China’s TikTok over ‘immoral and indecent’ content

BEIJING: Pakistan on Friday blocked TikTok after the China-based video-sharing company failed to comply with the instructions for “development of an effective mechanism for proactive moderation of unlawful online content”.

In a statement on Friday, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said the step was taken after the authority received a number of complaints from different segments of the society against “immoral and indecent content” on the popular application.

“Keeping in view the complaints and nature of the content being consistently posted on TikTok, PTA issued a final notice to the application and gave considerable time to respond and comply with the Authority instructions for the development of an effective mechanism for proactive moderation of unlawful online content,” read the statement issued by PTA.

In view of number of complaints from different segments of the society against immoral/indecent content on the video sharing application TikTok, pic.twitter.com/Vmp5umixeL

— PTA (@PTAofficialpk) October 9, 2020

“The application failed to fully comply with the instructions, therefore, directions were issued for blocking of TikTok application in the country.”

The regulator has also informed TikTok that it is open for engagement and will review its decision subject to a satisfactory mechanism by TikTok to moderate unlawful content.

Moments after the news broke, the app began to show a blank interface with no text or images loading.