Nepal lifts TikTok ban imposed for disrupting ‘social harmony’

Nepal on Thursday decided to lift its ban on Tiktok, nine months after it restricted the video-sharing social media app for disrupting “social harmony”.

The government’s decision came about during a cabinet meeting, reported the state-run National News Agency.

“A decision to remove the ban on TikTok has been made,” the minister for communications and information technology, Prithvi Subba Gurung, told reporters.

This comes a week after TikTok’s South Asia division requested Gurung that the ban be lifted and that it would follow Nepal’s regulations, according to ministry spokesperson Gajendra Kumar Thakur.

However, TikTok has to fulfil certain conditions before it can resume operations, and has been given three months to do so.

“Now onwards, TikTok has to help promote Nepal’s tourism; invest in digital literacy efforts; support to uplift Nepal’s public education system; and be mindful of the language used on its platform,” said Gurung.

“After TikTok assured the government that it would fulfil these conditions, we decided in principle to allow TikTok to resume operations in Nepal.”

“We’re excited to be able to continue enabling Nepali voices and creativity,” said a spokesperson for TikTok.

TikTok was banned in Nepal in November 2023 by the then prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led government, on the grounds that it “disturbs social harmony and disrupts family structures and social relations,” according to former minister for communications and information technology Rekha Sharma.

At the time, there was no further discussion or clarity on what had triggered the ban.

There were dozens of protests in Kathmandu when the ban was announced, with several saying the ban had not only cut off a source of income for multiple influencers, it also shut down an avenue for free speech.

“My life changed a lot because of TikTok, a lot. So many recognise me because of TikTok wherever I go,” said 39-year-old Nepalese influencer Anjana Aryal, whose TikTok had nearly 600,000 followers.

Aryal made close to $3,000 (£2,287) in a single month from endorsement deals and even sold her own brand of pickles, all of which came to a stop once the ban came into effect.

“People were earning, running businesses or just being entertained on TikTok. Everyone has been affected now and they don’t know what to do,” she said.

China’s ByteDance-owned TikTok is banned in several countries, including India and Afghanistan, with the UK, Australia, and the European Union restricting its use.

It was reported last year when the ban took effect that more than 1,600 TikTok-related cyber crime cases had been registered over the last four years in Nepal.

According to the Internet Service Providers’ Association of Nepal (ISPAN), TikTok had about 2.2 million users in Nepal.

While TikTok has not managed to catch up to the number of users on Meta’s social media apps – Facebook and Instagram – it is far more popular with users between the ages of 16 and 24.

Manish Adhikari, another influencer whose content followed cars and Nepalese start-ups, said he had moved to Instagram, but was struggling to fulfil his endorsement deals with brands because his views and audience were nowhere close to the reach he enjoyed on TikTok.

“Brands started to call me ... and I wondered if I was getting out of business, is my work going to stop?” Adhikari said.

Earlier this year, researchers aimed to figure out how TikTok’s algorithm worked, in an effort to understand its appeal.

However, researchers weren’t able to figure it out entirely, referring to the platform’s algorithm as a “black box”.

“The algorithm is such a black box to the public and regulators. And to some extent, it probably is to TikTok itself,” Franziska Roesner, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, said.