Albania blocks Tiktok for a year because of violence among children

Albania blocks Tiktok for a year because of violence among children

The Albanian government decided on Thursday to block Tikkok for 12 months. The popular video sharing service is held responsible for promoting violence and bullying, especially among children.

measures to improve security

Minister of Education Ogerta Manastirliu said that the authorities are in contact with Tikok to implement security measures such as parent controls, age verification and the integration of the Albanian language into the application.

reactions of the parents

Official information states that 1,300 meetings with around 65,000 parents have taken place that advocated the closure or limited by TikTok. These results formed an important part of the government's decision.

background of the decision

The step to close was initiated after a teenager stabbed another young person last November after a dispute was held on Tiktok. While Prime Minister Edi Rama said in December that the platform was striving to close, Tikkok called for "urgent clarity from the Albanian government" to the incident.

dialog with tikkok

On Thursday, Rama confirmed that one was in a "positive dialogue with the company". Tikok plan to visit Albania soon to offer "a number of measures to improve security for children". The company also found that they "have not found any evidence that the perpetrator or the victim had Tikok-Accounts" and several reports confirmed that the videos for the incident were published on another platform.

concerns of the parents

Albanian children represent the largest user group of Tikkok in the country. In the past few months there has been a growing concern with Albanian parents after reports on children who were inspired by content on social media to bring knives to school, and cases of bullying that were promoted by stories on Tikok.

increased safety precautions

The authorities have increased the police presence in some schools and also set up measures such as training programs for teachers, students and their parents to improve the level of safety.

protests of the opposition

The opposition has contradicted the closure of Tikkok and is planning a protest against this step for March 15. She described the ban as "act of intolerance, fear and terror against free thinking and expression".

international challenges for Tikok

TIKTOK, which is operated by the Chinese technology company Bytedance, faces questions and challenges in many countries. Recently, the app in the USA was briefly offline in order to meet a law, the bytedance obliged to sell the app or be banned in the USA. Tikok set his service in the United States for less than a day before he was restored after Donald Trump's assurance.

data protection concerns in the United Kingdom

At the beginning of this week, the British data protection office announced that it examined how the app uses personal information from 13 to 17 year olds to provide them with content recommendations. There are growing concerns about how social media use data from the online activities of children to control their recommendation algorithms and the risk of seeing young people inappropriate or harmful content.