Hussain 
PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked around 500,000 objectionable videos on the video-sharing application TikTok, a one-member Peshawar High Court bench was told.
During the hearing regarding the court’s ban on TikTok, PTA’s lawyer Jehanzeb Mehsud told Chief Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan that the telecom regulator had communicated with the TikTok owner over the issue of objectionable content.
He said that the company had set a focal person to make a content policy for Pakistan.
The bench had set and was hearing PTA’s application for an early hearing to the main petition that it had adjourned till April 6 ordering the continuation of the ban till a mechanism was in place to filter its objectionable and indecent content.
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On the request of PTI, the bench scheduled the hearing into the main petition jointly given by 40 Peshawar residents till April 1.
The residents sought orders for the FIA and PTA to ban TikTok in the country over the violation of the constitution, which doesn’t allow anti-Islamic acts in the country.
Advocate Jehanzeb Mehsud said that the issue was of vital importance to the country and the court shall fix an early hearing in this regard.
He said that the PTA was strictly checking the app and had blocked access to nearly 500,000 objectionable videos in the country.
He said even the US, China along other countries did not have any mechanism to filter out TikTok content.
The chief justice said that the court will appreciate if TikTok was used only for entertainment purposes and that indecent and un-Islamic videos won’t be allowed in the country.
‘No doubt, it is just an application for entertainment but with time it has become an addiction to which the young generation has fallen prey,’ the bench had ruled in its order.
