Kathmandu, Nov 13: The government has decided to close TikTok in Nepal. The social media is causing deterioration in social harmony, it reasoned.
The Cabinet meeting today at the residence of Prime Minister at Baluwatar took a decision in this regard, said Minister for Communications and Information Technology and the government’s spokesperson, Rekha Sharma.
“TikTok is constantly spreading propaganda to disrupt our family structure and social relations. We have decided to stop TikTok for the time being to control this,” she said.
The meeting directed the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to manage its technical part. “The decision to close TikTok has been made today. The related people are working on the technical parts of it. The Communication Ministry and the Nepal Telecommunication Authority have already started preparations for this. Probably, the decision will be implemented from today,” she said.
According to Nepal Police report, some 1,648 cases related to cyber crimes were filed in the Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police in a period of 4 years 3 months and surprisingly most of them were related to TikTok.
Recently, a meeting held at Kathmandu among International Representatives of TikTok from Singapore, representatives from Ministry of Home Affairs and Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police agreed to remove contents that were deemed inappropriate, sensitive and against privacy interference. However, it’s modality was not fixed.
Meanwhile, General Secretary of Nepali Congress Gagan Kumar Thapa has criticized over the decision of the government to shutting down TikTok entirely. He has suggested to make strong provisions for regulations instead of complete ban.
