PTA Says TikTok Ban Notice Is Fake, No Ban in Pakistan

Photo: Dawn

TikTok is not banned in Pakistan. The telecom regulator PTA says a notice doing the rounds on social media, claiming the app will be blocked across the country, is fake and no such order has been issued.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority spoke out on Thursday after the bogus notice began spreading online. The document, dated 4 November, claimed PTA had decided to suspend TikTok services nationwide after a review of the platform's content.

PTA said plainly that it had issued no such notification. "PTA clarifies that no such notification has been issued, and the circulating information is false and misleading," the authority said in a post on X.

The regulator asked people not to share or trust unverified claims about its decisions. It said citizens should get real information only from PTA's official website and its verified social media accounts, and warned that forwarding the fake notice only spreads the confusion further.

For TikTok users in Pakistan, nothing changes. The app is working as normal, and no fresh suspension order is under consideration, according to PTA's statement.

The scare is easy to believe because TikTok has been banned in Pakistan before, more than once. A short look back shows why so many people took the fake notice seriously:

• October 2020: PTA blocked TikTok for the first time over complaints about indecent content. The ban was lifted 10 days later after the company promised to block accounts spreading obscenity.
• March 2021: the Peshawar High Court ordered a ban, lifted the next month.
• June 2021: the Sindh High Court ordered PTA to suspend the app. That order was lifted three days later.
• July 2021: PTA blocked access again for failure to remove inappropriate content.
• November 2021: the ban was lifted for good after TikTok gave fresh assurances it would control immoral and indecent content on the platform.

Since then the app has stayed open in Pakistan, and TikTok has been taking down large numbers of videos here on its own. Between April and June this year, the platform removed more than 23.2 million videos in Pakistan for breaking its community rules, with nearly 95 percent of them taken down within 24 hours, according to its latest enforcement report.

PTA has also been active on other fronts this week. It has formally registered the BIGO LIVE and Likee apps in Pakistan under Bigo Service Pakistan, and says it will work with the company on content moderation and following Pakistani law.

The fake notice is a reminder to check before sharing. A screenshot of an official looking letter is not proof on its own, and in this case the regulator itself has said the paper is not real. If a ban ever does come, PTA will announce it through its own channels first.

The clarification comes in a busy week for official announcements in Pakistan, from the Election Commission fixing 7 February for the first phase of Punjab local government polls to the government announcing a public holiday on 9 November for Iqbal Day. The Federal Constitutional Court also stopped the Peshawar High Court from hearing cases about preventive detention of PTI workers this week.

Sources

• Dawn: PTA dismisses 'fake and misleading' notification claiming TikTok banned in Pakistan
• Express Tribune: PTA rejects 'misleading' notification alleging TikTok ban in Pakistan
• The Current: Fact check, PTA has not banned TikTok as claimed in viral notification

PTA says it will keep posting updates only through its official website and verified accounts, and users should check there before believing any ban claim.

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