Pakistan Court Orders Govt To Ban TikTok For 'Spreading Obscenity'

TikTok Ban: Peshawar High Court who pronounced the order in this regard while hearing a petition against the social media platform, said the videos being uploaded to TikTok were “unacceptable for Pakistani society”.

App TikTok | Representative Image

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) was on Thursday ordered to ban video-sharing social media platform TikTok over-proliferation of videos “spreading obscenity in society”.

Peshawar High Court (PHC) Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan, who pronounced the order in this regard while hearing a petition against the social media platform, said the videos being uploaded to TikTok were “unacceptable for Pakistani society”. 

“TikTok is affecting most of the youth. Reports being received about the platform in Peshawar are sad,” the judge added as per the Pakistan daily Dawn.

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PTA Director Kamran Gandapur, who was present in the Peshawar High Court during the hearing, said the authority had sent a request to officials of the social media platform but no “positive response” had been received yet.

Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan further said: “TikTok should be closed down unless their officials comply with your request and cooperate with you to prevent immoral content.”

When enquired where the offices of TikTok were located, the Chief Justice was told that the platform had no office in Pakistan, adding its head office was in Singapore and it was controlled from Dubai.

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The video-sharing social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance was banned in October last year after repeated warnings by the PTA over alleged ‘unethical content’.

TikTok was, however, later restored with conditions and warnings that it adheres to the laws of the country and that the social media platform should not be used for spreading vulgarity or indecent content besides ensuring the values of society should also not be abused.