Peshawar High Court lifts ban from TikTok, the video sharing app, on Thursday and directs Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to take necessary measure to ensure that “immoral content” is not uploaded to the platform.
PHC directed PTA Director General Tariq Gandapur to submit a detailed report at the next hearing scheduled for May 25.
Responding to the decision the Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry cautioned against “taking decisions that may affect the economic future of Pakistan”
Pesh HC has suspended the operation of single bench judgement,ban on @TikTok_Paki has been lifted,my submission is lets be very careful while taking decisions that may effect Economic future of Pak,we need a framework to encourage int companies so to make Pak their investment hub
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) April 1, 2021
At the start of the proceedings, PHC Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid asked the PTA director general to elaborate on the action taken by the telecom regulator.
The director-general replied that the authority had taken up the issue with the company again. He said the platform had also hired a focal person for content policy who will monitor all objectionable and illegal content uploaded to the platform.
“You should have a system in place to differentiate between good and bad content,” the judge remarked.
He stated that people will avoid uploading such content on the platform if PTA takes strict action against those that do.
“When people will learn that the PTA will take action against them, they will not upload such things,” he said.
The PTA director general said the authority had talked to the TikTok management regarding permanently blocking those that continually upload such content.
“This shouldn’t be a one-time thing. You should take further steps to stop objectionable content on TikTok,” the judge said.
PTA lawyer Jehanzeb Mehsud replied that there were some sites where it was not possible to block a certain type of content.
“The whole site has to be blocked,” he said.
At the last hearing, the telecom regulator had informed the court that it had blocked access to around 500,000 objectionable videos on TikTok.
