KARACHI – The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday imposed a ban on the widely popular video-sharing app, TikTok, across the country.
The high court issued the ruling while hearing a petition filed by a citizen against the online platform over immoral and un-Islamic content, local media reported.
The court has issued a notice to the Attorney General of Pakistan and others, and sought a reply from them by July 8.
The applicant informed the court that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) was approached to block the content but no action was taken.
This is the second time a high court imposed a ban on the China-based ByteDance’s app.
On March 12, the Peshawar High Court had directed the state-run telecommunication authority to “immediately block access” to the short-form video-sharing service.
The court directed PTA to block the app “until and unless some mechanism is devised to filter the material which is immoral and indecent and goes against our norms and ethics.”
PHC later made it clear the ban on video-sharing TikTok will remain intact till the removal of immoral content.
“The ban will remain in place until a mechanism to monitor immoral, vulgar, indecent, objectionable and lewd material on the application is devised,” it said.
On April 1 this year, the PHC ordered lifting of the ban after three weeks on popular video streaming app TikTok.
Justice Qaiser Khan, in a brief verdict, announced that the application can be unblocked but “indecent” content should not be posted on it.
Read more: https://pakobserver.net/unban-tiktok-peshawar-high-court-orders-pta/
