Shrinking space

In a totally believable move, the Pakistani government banned TikTok, a Chinese app, the most downloaded social media app in Pakistan in the year 2019.

For a majority of Pakistanis – who have already survived YouTube and Facebook bans – the ban doesn’t come as a surprise but as a stark reminder of the fact that the current government is not ready to learn anything from the mistakes of the past.

By banning apps indiscriminately, Pakistan will also lose the opportunity to explore today’s global digital age. In the early 2010s, when Facebook and YouTube were banned, the entire world was reaping the benefits of the digital economy. Our country took years to fully understand the economic benefits that the two platforms provide and even today it can’t get the most out of these digital platforms.

The authorities regularly talk about creating a positive image of Pakistan. This image, however, cannot be built in a vacuum. Social media apps have impressive reach – both global and domestic. In 2019, the photo of a disappointed cricket fan, Sarim Akhtar, went viral. Within a year, his followers crossed the 10,000 mark on Twitter (he has around 38,000 followers on Instagram). Yashraj Mukhate, a young music artist in India, reached new heights of popularity when he made a short song based on the dialogue of an Indian soap character. His followers crossed the one million mark in a couple of months.

One of Mukhate’s tracks features a girl from Lahore. The track was released on April 2, 2020 and has so far received 1.9 million views. When it comes to TikTok, the global reach is quite impressive. In August, clips from a school function went viral all over TikTok. The clips showed a principal encouraging her young students to say a few things about their country, Pakistan. For a couple of weeks, the whole internet followed the trend and the ‘wow grape’ meme became the greatest meme exports from Pakistan. Even though it seems like a far-fetched, and nearly unrealistic, idea, businesses could cash in on trendy memes to increase their sales in the international market.

It would be naive to think that the authorities have no idea about the app’s reach. After all, they used the app to raise awareness among the people about coronavirus. The question is: what happened in the last two months that the complaints about indecent content grew significantly?

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has said that it received multiple complaints about ‘immoral/indecent’ content on the app. No one from the authorities has defined what is classified as indecent content. Leaving this to the interpretation of the people is dangerous.

In 2016, a social media star, Qandeel Baloch, was killed because her brother thought that the videos and pictures she posted on social media were bringing disrespect to the family. The small amount of privilege that the young woman had was that her death was at least highlighted on the media and was used to highlight the problems that underprivileged women have to deal with when accessing digital tools.

The unfortunate truth of our society is that there are hundreds of Qandeels who have to fight their battles with their brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons just to have access to the internet. If anyone from their family thinks that what these women upload on the app is indecent, their mobile phones and internet connection are taken away from them, and, in some extreme cases, they experience domestic violence. When the state talks vaguely about what it deems ‘immoral’, it allows the people to justify their criminal behaviour.

The last thing that the authorities failed to look at is the opportunity that the app provided to its millions of Pakistani users to showcase their talent to the world. Our country that has been badly hit by terrorism doesn’t have many entertainment places for its citizens. Through social media apps, the people found a way out of their loneliness. In Pakistan, TikTok is a non-elitist app with a majority of users from the lower-middle-class and working class. Their videos have highlighted how the monopoly of a few powerful sources in our entertainment industry has deprived these talented people of opportunities.

The app introduced us to two brothers from Karachi who worked at a jewellery shop and made funny dance videos in their spare time. It introduced us to mimicry and VFX artists from all over the country. From political satire to funny remakes of classic songs, the app has everything on it. That the app has content that makes us cringe is true. But anyone who knows how these videos work would tell that not all content can be top-notch. There are high-budget movies that are flopped. A small fraction of content shouldn’t be the reason to deprive the country of the potential such apps carry.

Let’s face it; Pakistan doesn’t really have any ‘digital scene’. If it launches a local app based on the TikTok model, it wouldn’t be able to get as many downloads as TikTok garnered. The lone app will not be able to penetrate the international market. In such scenario, we have to rely on foreign apps.

Some critics have said that the real reason for the hasty ban is not immoral content but the few videos that are heavily critical of the government’s performance. If that’s the case, the authorities should think whether they’d want to be remembered as a democratic government with shrinking space for people who made a funny, less-than-a-minute-long video on how the government’s policies affect their lives.

The writer is an assistant editor at The News.

Email: aimen_erum@hotmail.com

Twitter: manie_sid