By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-12-22 20:31:41 | Updated at 2024-12-23 02:39:18
6 hours ago
Albania’s prime minister said on Sunday the ban on TikTok his government announced a day earlier was “not a rushed reaction to a single incident”.
Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Saturday the government will shut down TikTok for one year, accusing the popular video service of inciting violence and bullying, especially among children.
Authorities have held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents since the November stabbing death of a teenager by another teenager after a quarrel that started on social media apps. Ninety per cent of them approve of the ban on TikTok.
“The ban on TikTok for one year in Albania is not a rushed reaction to a single incident, but a carefully considered decision made in consultation with parent communities in schools across the country,” said Rama.
Following Tirana’s decision TikTok, whose parent company Bytedance is based in China, asked for “urgent clarity from the Albanian government” in the case of the stabbed teenager.
The company said it had “found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok”.
