PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) has ruled that TikTok will remain blocked until a mechanism is devised to remove ‘immoral and indecent’ content from the app.
A two-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid, issued a three-page written order on Tuesday in this regard.
“Some teenagers have even committed accidental suicide to gets followers,” the bench noted in the verdict, directing the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (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.”
Earlier on March 11, the PHC had ruled in favour of a man who petitioned to ban the video sharing app on ‘moral grounds’.
The court was informed that PTA had requested the management of the app to set controls its content but no positive response had been received so far.
The court inquired about the location from which the platform was being operated, to which DG PTA said that the head office for TikTok was located in Singapore; however, the application is operated from its Dubai office. “The platform does not have an office in Pakistan.”
