TikTok “damages social harmony”: Nepal says enough to the social network

TikTok still in the eye of the storm. The popular Chinese app, after the United States, Canada and the European Commission decided to introduce limitations on the use of TikTok by employees for security reasons, now has to deal with a much more extensive ban, that of Nepal, who declared that he will soon ban the app with unpublished reasons.

The case of Nepal is unique in the world

For the Chinese platform “it damages social harmony” and “encourages the spread of hateful messages”. While waiting for the ban to become operational, the popular app which has more than one and a half billion global users will no longer be able to be downloaded and used in the small Asian state. Unlike other cases, when ByteDance’s opaque data collection methods and their dissemination to the Chinese authorities cause concern, in the small Asian state they seem interested above all in limiting the spread of content deemed dangerous and illicit. According to data provided by the government, more than 1,600 cyber crimes linked to the platform have been recorded in the last four years.

The measure was introduced in light of a growing number of people complaining that they had no representatives to turn to to report any issues abuse And improper content. The government’s decision did not fail to raise controversy. “Regulation is necessary to discourage those who abuse social media, but closing them is completely wrong,” Gagan Thapa, leader of the Nepali Congress party which is part of the government coalition, wrote on seems to be to “stifle freedom of expression”.

Several countries, for security reasons, have limited the use of the app for certain categories of users, including government officials. National security would be at stake. The United States – the first – in December 2022 banned social media on all devices owned by Congress and its members. Decision then followed by more than half of US states. The European institutions have also gone in the same direction, having ordered the deletion of the app from their employees’ devices since last February. Other individual European states have followed suit, from France to Belgium to Denmark. The ban was also introduced in Taiwan, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The states that have completely banned TikTok

Nepal is the latest in a series of countries that have decided to curb the spread of TikTok in recent years. In these cases, the risks linked to TikTok concern the integrity of personal data which are elevated to a national security problem. In June 2020 in India the Ministry of Information has banned downloading the TikTok and other Chinese apps on any device.

According to the Ministry, these applications represented “a threat to the sovereignty and security” of the country. A decision aimed at protect the personal data and privacy of citizens and above all to prevent their data from being transmitted to and stored on servers outside India.

Even in other countries including Indonesia and Pakistan, the use of the ByteDance-owned application has often been banned for certain periods of time, sometimes very short. In Bangladesh the TikTok application has been accused, as happened in India, of contributing to the dissemination of pornographic and child pornography material and over the last few years access to the social network and use of the platform has often been banned or prevented.