Albania’s prime minister has announced the government intends to block access to TikTok for one year after the killing of a schoolboy last month raised fears about the influence of social media on children.

Speaking on Saturday Edi Rama declared the proposed ban would start in January.

[…]

The blocking of TikTok comes less than a month after the 14-year-old student was killed and another injured in a fight near a school in southern Tirana which had its roots in a confrontation on social media.

The killing sparked a debate in Albania among parents, psychologists and educational institutions about the impact of social networks on young people.

“In China, TikTok promotes how students can take courses, how to protect nature, how to keep traditions, but on the TikTok outside China we see only scum and mud. Why do we need this?”, Rama said.

TikTok is already banned in India, which was one of the app’s largest markets before it was outlawed in June 2020. It is also blocked in Iran, Nepal, Afghanistan and Somalia.

TikTok is also fighting against a law passed by the US Congress which would ban the app from 19 January unless it is sold by ByteDance - its Chinese parent

company.

  • InevitableList@beehaw.org
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    8 hours ago

    Don’t forget this line;

    The social media platform told the BBC it had found no evidence the person who allegedly stabbed the 14-year-old boy, or the victim himself, had TikTok accounts.

          • InevitableList@beehaw.org
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            13 minutes ago

            Everything TikTok is accused of is either just a true for other social media/ website or more so. Thanks to Edward Snowden we know for a fact that US tech companies forward your emails and data to the NSA. There is no evidence of Tiktok sharing any data with any government. Yet it’s tiktok that get’s threatened with bans rather than facebook and gmail.

            Instagram is notorious for making girls feel bad about their appearance and pushing them to anorexia and self harm yet no one’s proposing to ban it.

            • thelucky8@beehaw.org
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              6 minutes ago

              Did you even clicked the link? Tiktok appears to be part of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine. With each of your comments you open up just the next round of whataboutism. Tankies are doing tankie things. This is waste of time.