TikTok is Banned in these 20 States and Countries

Published on October 3, 2023 at 2:54 am by Ashar Jawad in Lists, News

In this article, we look at the 20 states or countries where TikTok is banned. You can skip our detailed analysis on how restrictions on TikTok have affected alternatives like YouTube shorts or Instagram reels by heading over to Top States and Countries Where TikTok is Banned, where we have listed countries where the social media platform is completely banned.

Governments across the world have expressed reservations about TikTok owned by Chinese company ByteDance that it may breach sensitive user data. Their primary concerns stem from Chinese laws that allow Beijing to demand user data from Chinese companies, which may end up being used for intelligence-gathering. TikTok denies the allegations, but lawmakers have escalated measures to restrict public access to the video app, while some countries have already banned TikTok or prohibited government officials from using it.

More than two dozen states in the US have placed a partial ban on the app, restricting government employees from using TikTok on their official devices. Several educational institutions in these states also restrict access to the Chinese app on WiFi networks in their campuses. According to a report, federal agencies in the United States were asked by the White House in February this year to delete TikTok from government devices, while in New York City, government employees were barred from downloading the app. A House committee later in March announced to back a legislation allowing President Biden to ban TikTok from all devices across the US.

On the other hand, there are also countries where TikTok is being banned over reasons other than privacy concerns. China’s ‘all-weather’ ally and neighboring Pakistan banned TikTok four times since October 2020 citing promotion of ‘immoral and unlawful content’. Moreover, the Indonesian government in 2018 banned TikTok for containing content which the government regarded as pornographic, inappropriate, and blasphemous.

Not discounting their own popularity, but restrictions on TikTok appear to be benefiting rival platforms. A ban on TikTok in India in 2020 was followed by Instagram launching reels in the same year, which resulted in Instagram becoming the most downloaded app in the world during the fourth quarter of 2021, which also happened to be its best quarter since 2014. This was only the second time since 2019 that TikTok had not been the most downloaded app worldwide in any quarter.

Amid rumors of a TikTok ban in the United States, a survey by Cowen showed that more than a quarter (26%) of adult Americans said that they would switch to Instagram reels, while 21% would prefer YouTube shorts if the government restricted access to the Chinese short-video app.

Numbers released in August this year by Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), which owns both Facebook and Instagram, revealed that its revenue from reels was narrowing in on TikTok. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)’s annual revenue run rate jumped up from $3 billion to $10 billion compared to last fall, which was close to TikTok’s $9.9 billion earnings from ads revenue last year.

Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the following remarks in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) Q2 2023 Earnings Call:

Investments that we’ve made over the years in AI, including the billions of dollars we’ve spent on AI infrastructure are clearly paying-off across our ranking and recommendation systems and improving engagement and monetization. AI recommended content from accounts you don’t follow is now the fastest-growing category of content on Facebook’s feed. Now, since introducing these recommendations, they’ve driven a 7% increase in overall time spent on the platform. This improves the experience because you can now discover things that you might not have otherwise followed or come across. Reels is a key part of this discovery engine and Reels plays exceed 200 billion per day across Facebook and Instagram. We’re seeing good progress on Reels monetization as well with the annual revenue run-rate across our apps now exceeding $10 billion, up from $3 billion last fall.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s video-sharing website YouTube launched its own short-form video segment, called Shorts, in September 2020, and entered the race to win the short-video war along with TikTok and Instagram. YouTube rolled out Shorts on TV in November 2022, which further helped boost the company’s new feature. According to Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), YouTube Shorts receive an estimated 50 billion views each day.

Shorts have been instrumental in growing YouTube’s audience, and subsequently bolstering its financial performance. Here is what Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) had to say in the company’s Q2 2023 Earnings Call:

Earlier this year, we shared that revenues across YouTube products were nearly $40 billion for the 12 months ending in March. I’m really pleased with how YouTube is growing audiences and driving increased engagement. YouTube Shorts are now watched by over 2 billion logged-in users every month, up from 1.5 billion just one year ago. The living room remained our fastest-growing screen in 2022 in terms of watch time. We are reaching more than 150 million people on connected TV screens in the U.S. and seeing growth in momentum internationally. And on Subscriptions, there is good growth. Late last year, we announced over 80 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers.

Methodology

We have listed the 20 countries and states where TikTok is banned using various news reports and government announcements that featured in the press regarding restrictions on the Chinese short-video application. We will first begin by countries or states where TikTok is partially banned, before moving on to territories where it faces a complete ban. Places are ranked in descending order of dates, in that countries or states that banned them earlier outrank nations that restricted TikTok later than them.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

Let’s now head over to our list.

TikTok is banned in these 20 States and Countries: