Adverse economic properties include depriving creators of livelihoods, deterring investors, and harming digitization policy
KARACHI: TikTok will be unblocked in Pakistan if the platform removes “vulgar” content, a government minister said Saturday.
The Chinese app was banned for failing to remove “immoral” content after being given phase to submit with instructions from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
Pakistan TikTok users have been living in that reality for more than a month. On October 9, the country’s government officially banned the app
Information and Technology Minister Syed Aminul Haque said the block would be lifted if the app carried out the required cleanup.
“For the time life, (tiktok unban in Pakistan date) has been closed,” he told Arab News. “If they give a guarantee, then it will be certified to reopen. They were advised twice during the last three months to remove the vulgarity-related content. Every time they undertook but did not comply.”
He supposed that the government was ready to talk to tiktok unban in Pakistan date.
“If they approach (us), we will sit with them and next removal of the content, it (the app) will be restored,” Haque added.
In September the PTA said it had approached TikTok to immediately block “objectionable content” open on its platform in Pakistan and avoid the use of its platform “for disseminating illegal content.”
It did not about at the time what travels it would take if TikTok did not comply.
The choice to block the app has caused debate, with experts warning that it would have an adverse economic effect.
“Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are the cheapest source of marketing outreach and fastest conversion causes,” Badar Khushnood, a supporter of the National E-Commerce Council, told Arab News. “If the touch facts of access to the market are closed and we don’t understand their needs, then many small and micro businesses will be affected. Their marketing cost was low due to these marketing tools. It would be far better to make a choice by multi-stakeholder engagement. We need to understand how these new communication technologies operate. How to align our cultural, religious, and national agendas with them for this deep multi-stakeholder engagement is a must.”
The ban is likewise seen as detrimental to the government’s Digital Pakistan Policy to accelerate digitization for economic development.
“It shows a regulatory environment where apps can be blocked and that makes the environment unfriendly to investors, especially in the tech sector at a time where the IT sector is growing,” Usama Khilji, director of Bolo Bhi, a civil society organization geared toward advocacy, policy, and research in the areas of digital rights in Pakistan, told Arab News. “Moreover, apps like TikTok are a source of income for thousands of content creators, with some having a following of more than 10 million. This shows the economic potential that such a ban averts to the detriment of so many creative Pakistanis.”
One of Pakistan’s most popular TikTok celebrities, Hareem Shah, said the ban would affect those who made a living from the platform.
“If we look at TikTok, there are many poor (people) who have taken to this platform as a means of livelihood,” she added. “Their means of livelihood has been taken away … This should not happen.”
According to political analysts, blocking social media platforms made Pakistan look like a country that was unenthusiastic about allowing innovative disruptive technology companies to grow. TikTok unbans in Pakistan date.
Pakistan blocked five dating apps in August: Tinder, Tagged, Skout, Grindr, and SayHi.
In July, the PTA said it had banned the Singaporean live-streaming app Bigo over “immoral, obscene and vulgar content.” Bingo was subsequently unblocked. The hugely popular online game PUBG was also banned in Pakistan throughout July.
“Applying laws in such a broad manner does not send the right message to local and international investors and start-ups,” political economist Uzair Younus told Arab News. “It raises clouds over Pakistan’s technology sector.”
Pakistan has banned popular short video app TikTok, citing the circulation of videos that it deemed “immoral and indecent.”
The move comes months after the South Asian country raised serious concerns about the nature of some videos on ByteDance’s app and the impact they posed on society.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the country’s telecommunication authority, said in a statement Friday evening that despite the warnings and months-long time, TikTok “failed to comply with the instructions, therefore, directions were issued for blocking of TikTok application in the country.” The authority had received a “number of complaints from different segments of the society” over the videos, it said.
Some individuals in Pakistan, a nation with about 75 million internet users, told TechCrunch that the TikTok app and its website were already inaccessible to them.
“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,” said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority in a statement.
The move from Pakistan comes months after its neighboring nation, India, banned TikTok, Bigo and 57 other apps developed by Chinese firms over cybersecurity concerns. Prior to the ban, TikTok identified India — where it had amassed over 200 million monthly active users — as its biggest market outside of China. Like in India, TikTok is immensely popular in Pakistan, said Danish Khalid, an executive at Bykea, a Karachi-headquartered ride-hailing startup.
And then there is the U.S., the biggest market by revenue for TikTok, where the app’s future remains uncertain.
‘Immoral’ content
Pakistan began exercising control over its internet long before TikTok came along. Authorities blocked YouTube from 2012 until 2016 after an anti-Islam short film was posted, for example.
In 2016, Pakistan enacted a controversial cybersecurity law to regulate internet content. That gave authorities the power to block a range of content for a variety of reasons —including in the “interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan.” Activists say the law threatens the rights of privacy and freedom of expression.
Between June 2018 and May 2019, the country blocked more than 800,000 websites, according to the human rights watchdog Freedom House.
Broad bans
One expert, though, finds the TikTok ban to be a unique situation. The app’s growth within Pakistan’s lower-middle-class — especially during the Covid-19 pandemic — has caught the government by surprise, according to Habibullah Khan, the founder of Penumbra, a digital marketing agency based in Karachi.
Khan, who has been following TikTok’s rise in Pakistan, said that the voices of poor Pakistanis who were not well-represented on other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter flocked to TikTok.
“From May onwards you saw videos critical of rising food prices and critical of the government’s related lack of governance showing up on the main feed,” Khan said. “This was the first time that a ‘truth’ that could not be managed on social media was making it out to the public unfiltered.”
Other critics of Pakistan’s approach have suggested that the morality argument masks a desire to ban a broad array of speech.
The TikTok ban “comes against a backdrop where voices are muted on television, columns vanish from newspapers, websites are blocked and television ads are banned,” Amnesty International South Asia tweeted on Friday.
In blocking TikTok, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority did not specify which content triggered “a number of complaints from different segments of the society.” The authority said, though, that the decision could be revisited if TikTok regulates “unlawful” content.
TikTok said Monday it has “robust protections in place to support a safe and welcoming platform for our community.”
“TikTok is an inclusive platform built upon the foundation of creative expression, and we are hopeful to reach a conclusion that helps us serve the country’s vibrant and creative online community,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
