The High court has ordered relevant authorities to immediately remove all “destructive” games and mobile applications – including TikTok, PUBG, Free Fire, Bigo Live, and Likee – from online platforms in Bangladesh.
The bench of Justice Md Mozibur Rahman Miah and Justice Md Kamrul Hossain Mollah passed the order on Monday (August 16) after hearing a writ petition.
The court also issued a ruling asking concerned authorities of the government why such mobile apps should not be banned from the country’s online space.
Secretaries of the Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministry, chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), secretaries of the Education Ministry, Law Ministry, Health Ministry, the inspector general of police, Bangladesh Bank, bKash, Nagad and 18 other individuals and organizations were asked to respond to the rule within 10 days.
On June 19, Supreme Court lawyers Barrister Mohammad Humayun Kabir Pallab and Barrister Mohammad Kawser sent a legal notice to the government to ban these apps. They sent the legal notice on behalf of the rights organization Law and Life Foundation.
On June 24, they filed a petition with the High Court after not hearing any response from the relevant authorities.
In the petition, the lawyers stated that the country’s youths and adolescents are becoming addicted to online games such as PUBG and Free Fire, and various online platforms like TikTok, Likee and Bigo Live.
They, also stated that these “alarming” apps and their addiction are destroying social values, education and culture.
Bangladesh Police have already arrested several members of a large human trafficking gang who use TikTok as a medium.
VPN loophole
On January 1, 2017, the Bangladesh government launched an anti-porn campaign to create safe and secure internet space for all. It has blocked 22,000 porn sites in three consecutive years.
Yet, the ban was completely ineffective as Google Trends analytics tool suggest that the word “porn” or other porn-related terms are the most searched keywords on Google from Bangladesh.
Despite the ban in 2018, adult stars Mia Khalifa and Sunny Leone were the top searches from Bangladesh.
Google Trends can estimate the locations of the users even when they browse the internet in incognito mode or using a virtual private network (VPN) to mask their location.
After the porn ban in 2017, VPN usage in Bangladesh spiked at a high rate, specially after the Covid-19 pandemic began.
At present, the third most downloaded free app in Bangladesh on Play Store (Google’s smartphone application store) is called ‘Night Owl VPN Pro.’ Also, 47 out of the 100 most downloaded free apps in Bangladesh are VPN apps.
This widespread popularity and practice of using VPN prove that such bans will also be ineffective against apps like TikTok, PUBG, Free Fire, Bigo Live, and Likee.
According to 2017’s “Amended Directives on Virtual Private Network (VPN)” released by Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission does not exactly make VPN usage in Bangladesh illegal.
Government agencies have failed to enforce the anti-porn campaign of 2017 and have not issued any success statements since then.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring India, TikTok has remained banned since June 29, 2020, and porn was banned back in 2018.
Yet, according to the 2019 research from the analytics firm SimilarWeb India’s VPN downloads shot up 405%. TikTok is still a widely used app in India via VPN, despite the ban.
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