Hidayatullah.com — The Afghan Ministry of Communications has announced that the social media platform TikTok and the game PUBG are “misleading the younger generation” and will be immediately blocked.
The ministry said it had given Afghan telecom companies one month to block TikTok and three months to block PUBG.
Both apps are very popular among young Afghans.
The decision to block it was accepted by Najibullah Haqqani, acting minister of telecommunications and technology for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the ministry of interior, as well as several other government agencies.
A spokesperson for the ministry, Enayatullah Alekozai, told 5Pilar that the app “misleads young people”.
TikTok is a Chinese company and one of the most popular apps in the world. It is a short video hosting service that hosts content such as pranks, actions, tricks, jokes, dances and entertainment with a duration of 15 seconds to ten minutes. Accessing adult content is very easy.
PUBG (formerly known as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) is a battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Studios in South Korea. The game, inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, involves up to a hundred players parachuting onto an island where they search for weapons and equipment to kill other players while avoiding being killed.
PUBG has sold over 75 million copies on PC and game consoles as of the end of 2021, and is the best-selling video game on PC and Xbox One, and the fifth best-selling video game of all time.
Afghanistan is the third country, after Pakistan and India, to declare that it will ban the PUGB.
The Islamic emirate is gradually cracking down on social activities deemed incompatible with Sharia law. Previously, they had stopped releasing several foreign TV series from neighboring countries.
Telecom companies in Afghanistan previously struggled to block Tik Tok and PUBG due to the use of a virtual private network (VPN) app that allows users to browse banned links and websites.*
Representative: Nasirul Haq
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