Indonesia Lifts Week-Long Ban on Short Video Platform Tik Tok

Indonesia unblocked Tik Tok on July 10, ending its one-week ban on the Chinese short video app after it agreed to censor “negative content”, according to government statement.

Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information imposed a temporary ban on Tik Tok on July 3, due to some of the negative contents on the platform that may have a negative influence on the teenagers, according to the statement from Ministry of Communications. Tik Tok is the overseas version of Douyin, the most popular short video platform in China developed by the Beijing-based technology company Bytedance, also commonly referred to as Toutiao.

“This blocking is temporary until Tik Tok fixes and clears its illegal content,” said Samuel A. Pangerapan, the ministry’s director general of information application on July 3.

The ban was overturned on the condition that Tik Tok agreed to clear “all negative content” from the app and set up a team of 20 censors to monitor the contents of the uploaded videos in Indonesia.

Tik Tok has topped the list as the most downloaded app globally on Apple Inc.’s app store in the first quarter of 2018 with a record-breaking 45.8 million downloads. Available in over 150 countries with more than 100 million daily active users, it is also a market leader in Japan and most Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia.