Albania blocks Tiktok: “There is only dirt and excrement”

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.

“Tiktok is the crook in the neighborhood,” said the Albanian head of government at a meeting with teachers, parents and psychologists in Tirana. “We’re going to get this crook out of our neighborhood for a year.” Albania will shut down the service for a year from January and start educational programs for children, Rama said. Parents should also be supported in “supporting their children’s careers”.

The content that Tiktok offers in China is completely different than 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 block 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.

Several states had previously restricted access to online networks for children. The Spanish Parliament passed an age limit of 16 for access to social media platforms in June. A week ago, Australia banned children and young people under 16 from accessing TikTok, Instagram & Co. And in the US state of Florida, a law will come into force in January that prohibits children under 14 from setting up social media accounts.