Nepal joins a growing list of countries banning TikTok
Another country bans TikTok, the short video giant owned by ByteDance with over a billion active users around the world.
Nepal, which has a population of nearly 30 million, has banned TikTok. The decision, first reported by the New York Times, came shortly after the Himalayan country introduced a rule requiring social platforms to register with the local government. TikTok’s refusal to combat hateful content was affecting “social harmony”, the report said, citing the Nepal government.
Specifically, Nepalese authorities are concerned about TikTok content that “stokes religious hatred, violence and sexual abuse and has led to offline clashes, imposing curfews and police deployment.”
TechCrunch has contacted ByteDance for comment.
TikTok’s meteoric rise has been met with resistance as countries around the world become increasingly wary of China’s influence. The app lost a significant market in 2021 after it was banned by India. among dozens of Chinese Internet services, including messaging giant WeChat, amid escalating border tensions between the two countries. In May, Montana became the first state of the United States to ban TikTok due to concerns about Beijing’s possible access to its users’ information.
Many other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, have imposed restrictions on TikTok to varying degrees, primarily banning government officials from using the addictive, algorithm-driven short-video app.
Tic Tac has long maintained that it does not share data with the Chinese government. In the United States, its biggest market, the application spent up to $1.5 billion on “Project Texas” to store user data on land.
