Nepal said on Monday that it would be banning China’s TikTok, stating that “misuse” of the popular video app was disrupting social harmony and goodwill and that there was an increasing desire to manage it. The growing demand to govern the app prompted Nepal’s decision to prohibit TikTok.
TikTok has already been partially or entirely banned by other nations, with several governments claiming worries about security as the motivation.
According to estimates from Nepalese local media, over the past four years, Nepal has registered more than 1,600 cases of cybercrime connected to TikTok.
According to Rekha Sharma, Nepal’s Minister for Communications and Information Technology, the decision to prohibit TikTok was made at a cabinet meeting on Monday.
According to Sharma’s comments to Reuters, “colleagues are working on closing it technically.”
Purushottam Khanal, the chair of the Nepal Telecom Authority, stated that requests had been made to internet service providers to shut down the application.
“Some have already closed while others are doing it later today,” Khanal told Reuters of the already closed businesses.
A comment request was sent to TikTok, but the company did not immediately answer. It has been said in the past that restrictions are “misguided” and are founded on “misconceptions.”
The leaders of Nepal’s opposition have voiced their disapproval of the move, stating that it is devoid of “effectiveness, maturity, and responsibility.”
“Many undesirable content can also be found on other social media platforms. “What needs to be done is to regulate them, not restrict them,” Pradeep Gyawali, a prominent leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), stated. Gyawali served as the country’s foreign minister in the past.
TikTok and hundreds of other apps developed by Chinese developers were prohibited in India in June 2020 because they threatened the country’s sovereignty and security. Nepal is a neighboring country of India.
Another South Asian nation, Pakistan, has at least four times instituted a ban on the app because of what the government of Pakistan refers to as the app’s “immoral and indecent” material.
