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TIRANA, Albania (AP) — The Albanian Cabinet decided on Thursday to shut down TikTok for 12 months, blaming the popular video-sharing platform for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children.
Education Minister Ogerta Manastirliu said officials are in contact with TikTok on installing filters like parental control, age verification and the inclusion of the Albanian language in the application.
Authorities had conducted 1,300 meetings with some 65,000 parents who “recommended and were in favor of the shut down or limiting the TikTok platform,” the minister said.
The Cabinet initiated the move last year after a teen stabbed another teenager to death in November after a quarrel that started on TikTok.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the government’s decision.
When Prime Minister Edi Rama said in December they were aiming at closing the social media platform, TikTok asked for “urgent clarity from the Albanian government” on the case of the stabbed teenager.
On Thursday Rama said they were in a “positive dialogue with the company,” and that TikTok would visit the country soon to offer “a series of measures on increasing the security for children.”
The company said it had “found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok.”
Albanian children comprise the largest group of TikTok users in the country, according to researchers.
There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children being inspired by content on social media to take knives to school, or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.
Authorities have increased police presence at some schools and set up other measures including training programs for teachers, students and their parents.
The opposition has not agreed with TikTok’s closure and has set March 15 for a protest against the move. It said the ban was “an act of intolerance, fear and terror from free thinking and expression.”
TikTok, which is operated by Chinese technology firm ByteDance, has faced questions in many countries and was briefly offline in the United States recently to comply with a law that requires ByteDance to divest the app or be banned in the U.S.
The app suspended its services in the U.S. for less than a day before restoring service following assurances from Trump that he would postpone banning it.
Earlier this week, the U.K.’s data protection watchdog said was investigating how the app uses the personal information of 13 to 17-year-olds to deliver content recommendations to them.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said that there are growing concerns around how social media platforms were using data generated by children’s online activity to power their recommendation algorithms, and the potential for young people to see inappropriate or harmful content as a result.
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