The Balkan country of Albania wants to block access to the video platform TikTok for a year.
Prime Minister Edi Rama announced this. After appropriate technical preparations, the platform should no longer be accessible in Albania in six to eight weeks, said Rama in the capital Tirana. The portal, which is successful with short videos, belongs to the China-based company ByteDance.
The content that TikTok offers in China is completely different from that which is distributed outside of China. “There is only dirt and feces,” Rama was quoted as saying by the state news agency ATA. Children and young people in particular would be endangered and “taken hostage”.
Discussions about the possible harmful effects of TikTok arose in Albania after a 14-year-old student was killed in a stabbing almost a month ago. The two groups of young people involved had become hostile to each other on TikTok and had arranged to have a brawl that ended up being fatal.
How the TikTok ban would be implemented in Albania initially remained unclear. In addition, there are always loopholes in such bans: In countries where certain content is blocked, users often resort to protected network connections (VPN) to bypass such blocks. VPN tunnels can make it appear as if a user is in another country.
Trump: Maybe we should keep TikTok for a while
US President-elect Donald Trump has once again indicated that he will not support the impending shutdown of TikTok in the US. “I’m going to have to start thinking about TikTok,” said the Republican at the right-wing conservative conference “AmericaFest” in the state of Arizona. “Maybe we should keep this thing for a while.”
The video app is owned by the China-based company Bytedance and claims to have 170 million users in the USA. There is concern that the Chinese government could gain access to user data and exert political influence. TikTok is fighting in the US Supreme Court against a law passed in April that would force the app to be sold by January 19th. Otherwise, you risk being banned from the app stores and losing important infrastructure.
Trump: TikTok has “room in my heart”
The date falls one day before Trump’s inauguration. During his first term in office, he tried in vain to sell TikTok. During the election campaign, Trump spoke out against banning the platform. He recently emphasized that TikTok has a “place in his heart.” Although Trump cannot overturn the law himself, under his administration the Justice Department would be responsible for its implementation.
TikTok helped both parties in the election campaign to attract young voters
-to reach voters. While a majority of this age group for
Trump’s Democratic opponent Kamala Harris voted, the Republican was able to make significant gains compared to 2020.
TIRANA/PHOENIX/WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX)