Bengaluru NFAPost: Pakistan has banned five dating apps including Tinder, Grindr, Tagged, Skout, and SayHi for an indefinite period for failing to obey the local laws and for spreading immoral/obscene content on the platform.
As Reuters reports, the app makers were recently notified by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority about the “negative effects of immoral/indecent content streaming” on their platforms.
The government agency resorted to blocking these apps indefinitely as the companies failed to respond to its notice, instructing the shutdown of their streaming services within the set deadline.
The ban order has been imposed regardless of the popularity of these apps in recent times. Tinder has amassed over 440,000 downloads in the last one year while Grindr, Tagged and SayHi have been downloaded 330,000 times each during the same period. Meanwhile, Skout has garnered over 100,000 downloads as the least popular of the five dating apps.
The ban order was imposed indefinitely by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority in a recent press release posted on its official Twitter account. There is no mention of the time limit for the ban. However, the authorities may consider lifting the ban “provided the management of the companies assures adherence to the local laws.”
Pakistan has often drawn the spotlight for its highly religious and draconian censorship rules against extra-marital affairs and homosexuality. YouTube recently got its 3-year ban lifted after Google created a custom-filtered version of it, which enabled government censorship on certain sensitive content being streamed on the video platform.
Just a couple of months ago, TikTok received final notice by the government for reportedly promoting “immoral, obscene and vulgar content” on its platform.
