Taliban: No More TikTok

Afghanistan's rulers say young people are being led astray
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 22, 2022 2:50 PM CDT
No More TikTok, PUBG in Afghanistan
An Indian boy plays the online game PUBG on his phone in Hyderabad in 2019.   (AP Photo/ Mahesh Kumar A.)

The Taliban has been outlawing various products and activities since taking power in Afghanistan. TV shows with women in them were banned last fall, per CNN. Wine fell out of favor earlier this month. The latest prohibition reaches young people, the BBC reports: The use of TikTok and PUBG is no longer allowed. A Taliban spokesman said the decision was made to "prevent the younger generation from being misled." It's not clear when the bans will take effect or whether they're permanent. The government has ordered the apps removed from internet servers, per Bloomberg, so they're "inaccessible to everyone in Afghanistan."

The video-sharing app TikTok and PUBG, an online shooting game, have become more popular in Afghanistan lately as other bans took effect, per the BBC. PUBG—PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds—has about 9 million players in the country. Almost two-thirds of Afghanistan's 39 million people are 25 or younger. Also Thursday, the Taliban announced it would stop TV channels from showing what it called "immoral material." The Taliban spokesman said, "We've received a lot of complaints about how the TikTok app and the PUBG game are wasting people's time." (More Taliban stories.)

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