It seems Pakistan authorities’ patience with short-video sharing platform TikTok has been stretched to the limit. On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) announced that TikTok would be blocked in view of a number of complaints “from different segments of society against immoral/indecent content”.
“Keeping in view the complaints nad 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 development of effective mechanism for proactive moderation of unlawful online content. However, the application failed to fully comply with the instructions, therefore, directions were issued for blocking of TikTok application in the country,” the notice by PTA read.
“TikTok has been informed that the Authority is open for engagement and will review its decision subject to a satisfactory mechanism by TikTok to moderate unlawful content,” the notice concluded.
The move comes a month after the PTA banned dating apps Tinder, Grindr and others for immoral content. Interestingly, three months earlier, it had issued a “final warning” to TikTok over obscene material.
On June 1, it banned PUBG: Mobile over complaints that it was addictive and that students were wasting their time on the game—revoking the ban a month later after being given assurance that laws would be followed.
TikTok’s ban in Pakistan comes after the app was banned in many of its biggest markets—India and the United States (where the ban has been put on hold after a federal judge ruled that it could not be blocked from app stores given TikTok’s legal challenge of the ban).
