ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok video app will be banned in Afghanistan as part of a moral policing drive by the ruling Taliban (the movement banned in Russia), a spokesman for the group said.
The widely-used social media application is “misleading the younger generation,” Inamullah Samangani said on Twitter. TikTok’s “filthy content was not consistent with Islamic laws,” he later said by phone.
The decision, taken during a cabinet meeting Wednesday, is the first time the militant group has banned an app since they came to power last year. The cabinet also decided to block the popular South Korean PUBG battlegrounds game and bar Afghan television channels from airing “immoral” content, Samangani said.
The group’s crackdown on TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app, is just one part of their stringent religious policing campaign, which includes suspending high school education for girls, forcing government workers to grow beards, and ordering taxi drivers to not allow women to travel more than 70 km without a male family member.
About 23% of the country’s 40 million population had access to the internet in January, and internet users increased by 7% between 2021 and 2022, according to datareportal’s Digital 2022: Afghanistan report.
