ISLAMABAD: Islamabad High Court (IHC) has served notices to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MOITT) over banning TikTok, the short video sharing platform, in Pakistan.
The regulator banned the platform on Oct 9, saying the company failed to remove “immoral” and “indecent” content from the application. By then, TikTok had been installed 43 million times in Pakistan, according to the analytics firm Sensor Tower, making it the app’s 12th largest market in terms of installs.
The PTA said TikTok has been informed the regulator is open to engagement and will review its decision subject to a satisfactory mechanism by TikTok to moderate unlawful content.
In July, the regulator issued a “final warning” to the short-form video app over explicit content posted on the platform.
TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, has been caught in a firestorm globally due to security and privacy concerns. It has already been blocked in India and it faces scrutiny in countries from Australia to the United States.
