'PUBG' Has Been Banned In Afghanistan For The Oddest Reason

While only 23% of Afghanistan’s population are internet users, certain online activities are now being banned by the Taliban as part of a policy on “moral policing”.

As internet users have increased by 7% in the country of over 40 million people between 2021 to 2022, according to a report by datareportal. The current figure, that 23% of inhabitants have access to the internet, falls just below the 26% who live in urban areas. This sudden increase in part has led the Taliban, who took back governance of the country in 2021, to implement policies which police the usage of internet activity among citizens. 

You can take a look at the trailer for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in the video below.

A report by Bloomberg has now revealed that the Taliban has banned certain activities online such as playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and social media app TikTok. Deputy central spokesman for the Taliban, Inamullah Samangani, told the website via Twitter and phone that TikTok is “misleading the younger generation” and that its “filthy content was not consistent with Isalamic law”.

During a meeting on Wednesday (20 April), the cabinet decided to ban the app and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds effective immediately. They also barred Afghan TV channels from airing “immoral” content. It was not specified which content specifically the cabinet deemed immoral.

Samangani continued, “We’ve received a lot of complaints about how the TikTok app and the PUBG game are wasting people’s time... The ministry of communications and information technology was ordered to remove the apps from internet servers and make them inaccessible to everyone in Afghanistan.”

The bans are part of a stringent religious policing campaign which also included suspending high school education for girls and ordering taxi drivers to not allow women to travel more than 43 miles without a male member of their family.