Afghanistan is the most recent nation to implement a nationwide TikTok ban, courtesy of the Taliban.

The transfer was introduced Thursday in a tweet revealed by Taliban spokesman Inamullah Samangani, who mentioned the choice was made on the discretion of The Ministry of Communications and Info Know-how as a result of TikTok "misleads the youthful technology."

The South Korean multiplayer battle online game PUBG, which is brief for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and a subsidiary of the corporate Krafton was additionally banned.

It stays unclear when the ban will go into impact and whether or not or not it is everlasting.

Samangani mentioned the bans assist "stop as a lot as attainable the publication of a channel that publishes immoral materials and packages."

Taliban TikTok
The Taliban ordered a ban in opposition to video-sharing app TikTok and the survival-shooter PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) online game on Thursday, April 21, insisting they had been main Afghanistan's youth astray. Above, the TikTok emblem may be seen on a cell phone.Wakil Kohsar/AFP through Getty Photographs

Bloomberg reported Thursday that the choice occurred throughout a cupboard assembly Wednesday and is the primary time the militant group has banned an app since they got here again to energy final yr.

The transfer accompanies a "non secular policing marketing campaign" that features suspending highschool schooling for women, forcing authorities employees to develop beards, and ordering taxi drivers to not permit ladies to journey greater than 43 miles and not using a male relative.

Samangani informed Bloomberg that TikTok, which operates beneath Chinese language firm ByteDance, consists of "filthy content material not in step with Islamic legal guidelines."

"We have obtained a variety of complaints about how the TikTok app and the PUBG recreation are losing individuals's time," he added. "The ministry of communications and data know-how was ordered to take away the apps from web servers and make them inaccessible to everybody in Afghanistan."

Newsweek reached out to Samangani for remark.

The Monetary Specific reported that youthful web customers have contributed in the direction of on-line development in Afghanistan, the place about 9 million customers browse the net and make the most of apps. Nearly two-thirds of the nation's approximate 39 million persons are 25 years outdated or youthful.

Datareportal, which publishes knowledge reviews and tendencies on nations worldwide, mentioned Afghanistan's inhabitants elevated by 913,000, or about 2.3 p.c between 2021 and 2022. Just a little over 51 p.c of the inhabitants is male. The median age is nineteen years, whereas youngsters 5 to 12 years compose the biggest age group demographic within the nation with 21.3 p.c.

Whereas web customers in Afghanistan elevated by about 603,000 between final yr and this yr, it's estimated that 31.07 million Afghans—or over 77 p.c of its inhabitants—have not logged on because the starting of this yr, in line with Datareportal.

In 2020, the Indian authorities banned TikTok and quite a few different Chinese language-based apps for good as a consequence of what officers contributed to knowledge mining that left residents compromised, the BBC reported on the time.

Based on The Solar, Indonesia and Bangladesh instituted non permanent bans of the social media platform lately, every citing rising pornography and playing charges—along with cultural or non secular beliefs particular to every nation. The bans had been lifted when TikTok agreed to higher regulate its content material. Pakistan additionally tried on 4 separate events to impose and preserve TikTok bans, however every one was in the end rescinded.

Newsweek reached out to TikTok, ByteDance and Krafton, the subsidiary for PUBG, for remark.