Both PUBG: Battlegrounds and TikTok have been banned in Afghanistan by the Taliban for “misleading the younger generation”.
As reported by Bloomberg today (April 21), both the video game and social media app are being banned as part of moral policing in Afghanistan, following the Taliban’s rise to power in the country last year.
The Taliban’s decision to ban both PUBG and TikTok came from a cabinet meeting held yesterday (April 20).
Deputy spokesman of Afghanistan Inamullah Samangani said in a tweet earlier today that both PUBG and TikTok had been blocked in the country as the game and app “misleads the younger generation” and “publishes immoral material and programs”.
Samangani added that TikTok’s “filthy content was not consistent with Islamic laws,” whilst on a phone call.
According to information from DataReportal’s 2022 report on Afghanistan (via Bloomberg), the country’s “internet penetration rate” at the start of this year was 22.9 per cent, meaning there were 9.23million internet users in the country this January.
Samangani added that the Taliban “received a lot of complaints about how the TikTok app and the PUBG game are wasting people’s time. The ministry of communications and information technology was ordered to remove the apps from internet servers and make them inaccessible to everyone in Afghanistan.”
Following the withdrawal of US troops last year, the Taliban seized every major city in Afghanistan and renamed the country to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Since then, the ultraconservative group has halted plans to let girls attend primary school and banned women in TV dramas (via the BBC).
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