ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday issued notices to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the federal government and the ministry of information technology and telecommunication (MOITT) over last week’s decision to block social media application TikTok in Pakistan.
On Friday, Pakistan’s telecommunications regulator announced it had banned TikTok over failing to remove “immoral” content from its platform.
While hearing a petition against the ban on Thursday, Islamabad High Court Chief Justice Athar Minallah asked PTA to explain reasons for the move.
“In this way the entire Internet will have to be shut down,” he said, reminding PTA that the court had already directed the regulator to frame rules to exercise its powers under the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act 2016, which PTA had failed to do.
The court also appointed president of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, Shehzada Zulfiqar, vice chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council, Abid Saqi, journalist Mazhar Abbas and former information minister Javed Jabbar as amici to assist the court on the issue of the banning of online platforms and its implications for freedom of expression and speech and right to access information.
They will also deliberate the alleged misuse of PECA and consider how freedom of expression and access to information could be curtailed by PTA on vague criteria such as morality and vulgarity.
Last month, PTA said it had asked TikTok to immediately block content deemed “vulgar” and “indecent” from being viewed in Pakistan.
In August, Pakistan blocked five dating apps, namely Tinder, Tagged, Skout, Grinder and SayHi. On July 21, PTA said it had banned the Singaporean live-streaming app Bigo over “immoral, obscene and vulgar content” and issued a last warning to Tiktok for “similar” reasons. Bigo was subsequently unbanned. The hugely popular online game PUBG also remained banned in Pakistan through July.
In September, PTA said it had approached TikTok to immediately block “objectionable content” available on its platform in Pakistan and prevent the use of its platform “for disseminating illegal content.”
“PTA has done so keeping in view the negative effects of indecent/immoral/nude content available on the platform,” PTA said in statement. “In addition, the platform has been directed to put in place an effective content monitoring and moderation mechanism to proactively remove Indecent/immoral content failing which necessary action will be taken under the law.”
PTA did not say at the time what actions it would take if TikTok did not comply with its orders.
In August, the PTA chairman attended an online meeting with senior management of TikTok and shared “growing concerns” in Pakistan over content available on the platform.
“Chairman PTA asked the platform to put in place stronger content monitoring and moderation mechanism so that the unlawful material is not accessible/viewed within Pakistan,” an August 28 statement by PTA said.
In its latest transparency report, TikTok has said Pakistan was one of five markets in the world with the largest volume of videos removed due to breach of community guidelines and terms of service.
“In the recent release of its Transparency Report, TikTok shared the global volume of videos removed for violating its Community Guidelines or Terms of Service, which showed that Pakistan is one of the five markets with the largest volume of removed videos,” the app had said in a statement. “This demonstrates TikTok’s commitment to remove any potentially harmful or inappropriate content reported in Pakistan.”
