By Our Staff Reporter
Pakistan’s telecommunications regulator announced on Monday that it had lifted the ban on the popular TikTok video-sharing app.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) claimed in a statement that the decision was taken after the management of TikTok had assured the PTA that it would block all accounts “involved in the spread of obscenity and immorality” in the region.
Pakistan Telecom Decision came more than a week after it barred the Chinese video-sharing site from “immoral and indecent” content. ByteDance-owned TikTok later said in a tweet that he was pleased to see the app unblocked for users in Pakistan.
“We appreciate the dedication of the PTA to ongoing fruitful dialogue and accept their dedication to the digital experience of Pakistani users,” he said. The move was widely embraced in Pakistan, where a number of people turned into stars overnight because of the content they created and the followers they amassed. Pakistan is TikTok’s 12th largest market, and analysts say the app’s popularity has risen tremendously in the country this year despite a lengthy coronavirus-related lockdown.
The video-sharing app has been downloaded almost 43 million times in Pakistan, including 14.7 million this year alone, according to data from the research firm SensorTower. In the backdrop of TikTok’s increasing popularity across Pakistan, there have been concerns about some of the content posted on the site.
The company’s transparency report shows that almost 6.5 million videos were captured between January and June-the third-highest for any country after India and the US. The report also shows that the Pakistani government had identified 40 accounts to TikTok on material that it did not agree with, but only two of those accounts had been deleted or limited by the app.
Pakistan is closely monitoring online content and has placed in place legislation asking digital networks to delete content that the government deems unacceptable. In September, the government said it had blocked access to Tinder, Tagged, Skout, Grindr, and SayHi dating apps for what it called “immoral and indecent content.” The government had allegedly blocked YouTube from 2012 to 2016 over blasphemous videos that had not been removed from the site at the time.