TikTok leaves Pakistan after the ban, pulling out investment, resources

Famous video-sharing social app, TikTok has decided to pull out investment and resources from Pakistan after PTA slapped a temporary ban on the app.

The authority on October 9, blocked the application citing that company’s failure to “fully comply" with its instructions for “development of an effective mechanism for proactive moderation of unlawful online content”.

ByteDance, the company who owns the app, in a statement said, “TikTok’s mission is to inspire creativity and joy, and that's just what we've done in Pakistan. We've built a community whose creativity and passion has brought joy to households across Pakistan and opened vital economic opportunities to incredibly talented creators.”

“This is why we're sad that our users and creators in Pakistan are still unable to access the app, more than one week after our services were blocked by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA),” it added.

Furthermore, the company said that they made concerted efforts to address questions from the government of Pakistan around our content moderation process, including significantly increasing the capacity of our local language content moderation team.

“After TikTok was blocked in Pakistan, we continued to engage with the PTA to demonstrate our commitment to comply with local laws and further enhance our content moderation capacity,” reads the statement.

“Though the PTA acknowledged and appreciated these efforts, our services remain blocked in the country and we have received no communication from PTA.”

“We continue to hope that our productive dialogue with the PTA can bring assurance of the government's commitment to a stable, enabling environment whereby we can explore investing further in the market, including in the inspiring talent we’ve seen thrive on TikTok.”

“If the government of Pakistan decides to reopen access to our services in the future, we can assess our allocation of resources to this market,” the company said.

The company regretted that Pakistan’s community is still unable to showcase their talent and creativity to the millions of users around the globe.

“We look forward to being able to reconnect with the energetic and talented youth of Pakistan and play our role in the success story of Pakistan."