ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court has instructed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to justify the reason for banning TikTok, a video-sharing application.
At a hearing Monday, Chief Justice Athar Minallah remarked that the authority has submitted a report but it doesn’t answer the questions put forward by the court. TikTok was banned by the country for the fourth time on July 21.
Petitions filed by the PTA in the Sindh High Court and the Peshawar High Court state that only 1% of the content on the app is objectionable. Why are blocking the app for a handful of videos, the court inquired.
Justice Minallah asked the attorney-general if experts were consulted before blocking the application. He pointed out that TikTok is mostly used by people from the lower-income segments who are making money out of it.
Irked at PTA’s inability to justice the ban, Justice Minallah authority to provide more reasons at the next hearing and adjourned the case till November 22.
At the previous hearing on August 7, the court issued a six-page order against PTA’s restriction on TikTok and asked the IT secretary to respond on Pakistan’s policy for social media apps.
On July 21, the PTA blocked access to TikTok under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016. This was the fourth time the app has been banned in the country.
“The action was taken due to the continuous presence of inappropriate content on the platform and its failure to take such content down,” the PTA said in a press statement.
The video-sharing app was first blocked in Pakistan on October 9, 2020, over “obscene and immoral” content. The PTA said it had issued a final notice to the app and gave considerable time to respond and develop and an effective mechanism for ‘proactive moderation of unlawful online content.’ TikTok has failed to fully comply with the PTA’s instructions, a press release sent by the authority reads.
