Ban TikTok For Vulgarity And Obscene Content Filed In Peshawar High Court

The famous video app ‘TikTok’ was recently banned in India. South Asia is considered to be one of the biggest markets of the video app, where users upload their creative videos to gather traction and audience.

Now, a Pakistani man from Peshawar wants to ban to come to Pakistan as well. With a thriving market for influencers and potentitlal actors of the future, the man seeks to get a ban on TikTok in Pakistan,

The petition has been filed in Peshawar High Court. The base of the petition is that TIkTok is promoting ‘vulgar’ content and ‘pornographic’ videos on its platform. He adds that this will ruin generations to come.

The man who wants TikTok banned has fulfilled all the right ways of getting the app banned. He reached Peshawar High Court after filing complaints with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA).

But both the authorities failed to find fault in the content being uploaded on TikTok. The man further levels that TikTok is promoting immoral and objectionable content, which is only partially correct.

Tiktok promotes ‘vulgarity’ and ‘obscene’ content

There are many different types of users of TikTok. While some upload creative, funny, witty, and videos of talent, others have been using it for obscene purposes.

A fact check shows that call girls and escorts have also been very active on the TikTok platform, finding customers to boom their businesses. This includes posting voyeur videos of themselves to gain traction.

The PTA on July 21, 2021, issued a last warning to the TikTok app asking to put in place a diligent system to control “obscenity, vulgarity, and immorality through its social media platform”.

Previously, others have tried to get TikTok banned in Pakistan as well. The app has also been a source of many suicides in both India and Pakistan. The app gained its viral traction initially from India, but soon, it was famous in Pakistan as well.

However, whatever the case may be, TikTok has become a source of livelihood for many. This brick-kiln worker’s success story is a huge example of that.

Moreover, some famous TikTok artists like Chaudhry Zulqarnain among others, earn up to Rs. 200,000 per month through TikTok.

TikTok, known in China as Douyin is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based Internet technology company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming.

It is used to create short music, lip-sync, dance, comedy and talent videos of 3 to 15 seconds, and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. ByteDance first launched Douyin for the Chinese market in September 2016.

Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide, including the United States, after merging with Musical.ly on 2 August 2018.

TikTok and Douyin have almost the same user interface but no access to each other’s content. Their servers are each based in the market where the respective app is available. In addition to the ByteDance headquarters in Beijing,

TikTok also has global offices, including in Dublin, Los Angeles, New York City, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo. Since its launch in 2016, TikTok/Douyin rapidly gained popularity in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia,

The United States, Turkey, Russia, and other parts of the world. As of August 2020, TikTok, excluding Douyin, has surpassed 1 billion users worldwide in less than four years. As of April 2020, Douyin has around 500 million monthly active users.

In June 2020, Kevin Mayer became CEO of TikTok and COO of parent company ByteDance, but he resigned on August 27, just four months into the job, Previously, he was chairman of Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International.

On 3 August 2020, US President Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok in the United States on 15 September if negotiations for the company to be bought by Microsoft or a different “very American” company fail. On 6 August, Trump signed two executive orders banning US “transactions” with TikTok and WeChat to its parent company, ByteDance, set to take effect 45 days after the signing.

It has been banned by the government of India since June 2020 along with other Chinese apps in response to a border clash with China