Taking back TikTok

On Friday, former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal posted a message to his official TikTok account @cmprachandaofficial. He wished a Happy Dasain to all Nepalis, and wished them good health and continued progress.

But almost exactly a year ago, his own Maoist-Nepali Congress coalition government banned the app claiming that it ‘disrupted social harmony’. By then, TikTok had seen a meteoric rise and media surveys showed it had overtaken Facebook.  

The real reason for the ban was that the established parties were spooked by newer, alternative leaders and pro-monarchist forces using the platform and social media to gather followers.

But in June this year, the Maoists were ousted from government, the UML joined the Nepali Congress coalition. K P Oli was appointed prime minister for the third time, and in August he unbanned TikTok as suddenly as it was banned.

Since then, TikTok has not wasted any time to make up for lost ground in Nepal. Last week it held a pre-Dasain ‘Grow with TikTok: A Masterclass for SMBs’ at the Marriott Hotel in Kathmandu aimed at helping small and medium business enterprises to grow their business.

“Humour works best on TikTok, it leads to crazy engagement,” one presenter advised the rapt audience. “Write scripts, have a strong opening, and stand in front of a window sideways for good lighting.” He stressed the need to upload frequently and experiment widely to find out what works for any particular brand.

While TikTok is mostly used by Nepalis to lip-sync or dance to song-snippets, one of the tips at the conference was the need to be authentic: to take a trend and make it work for users and their businesses.

“I started out by just making videos about what was really happening in my life, and people liked it,” admitted Anjana Aryal, whose achar business sells thousands of jars every week of 22 pickle varieties, employing 15 women. At last count, Aryal had 608,000 followers, and posts every day, mixing content about her pickles with videos of her dancing, shopping, or just talking.

Aryal was in a panel of four successful Nepali TikTokers slash business owners, all female, who spoke about how to sell well on the app. A fashion business, makeup studio, and an online store were the other presenters.

All four have been using TikTok since 2020 and had the same advice: be consistent, figure out your niche, be genuine, do not take internet hate personally, and find your voice.

Taranidhi Regmi runs the Tokha bookstore KitabKiro and has used TikTok for the last two years, reviewing books on video and encouraging people to read. He takes orders through a website and Whatsapp, and has shipped Nepali books to more than 48 countries.

“Initially, I didn’t like TikTok, I thought it was quite degenerate,” admits Regmi. “I was annoyed when my nieces were on it, but then I realised the benefits of the app by staying away from the nonsense.”

The conference also had a session on how TikTok handles safety issues, moderating content that may be mature and inappropriate, and how it deals with addictive and dangerous activities or products.

TikTok executives admit that theirs is a relatively new platform, and they are still learning as they go along. They tried to deflect some of the harder questions about balancing moderation and free speech, and about flagging videos as problematic that would be completely fine in a Nepali context. TikTok says it is implementing ‘community guidelines’ without going into detail about how that works.

“For the nine months that TikTok was banned in Nepal, we could not  really get clarity on it except the official explanation that it disrupted social harmony,” says Imad Jaffer of TikTok South Asia during a visit to Kathmandu last week. “We were more than open to dialogue, but the government was not responsive at all.”

Nepal was not the first to ban TikTok. India has banned it, and it has been closed temporarily in Pakistan four times. US President Joe Biden signed a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban on TikTok unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it to an American entity by 19 January 2025. The main reason is geopolitical, and sensitivity about personal data getting into Chinese hands

“In the Pakistan case, we understood that they had concerns about vulgarity on the app,” says Jaffer. “But the Nepal ban was the strangest. We got no explanation for it even though the public sentiment towards the app was overwhelmingly positive.”

Despite the ban, about half the Nepalis TikTok users just continued posting through VPNs. In some ways, the app is a victim of its own success — it is highly addictive algorithm that can create a feedback loop of content that has strong political influence.

Nepal’s populist anti-establishment politicians, monarchist and Hindu nationalist RPP were using the app successfully to gather support, and spread the word about their rallies just before the ban. The Maoist-NC coalition could have felt threatened.

After the coalition switch, the Cabinet earlier this month reinstated TikTok  under four conditions:

1. Help promote Nepal’s tourism
2. Invest in digital literacy 
3. Support public education system 
4. Be ‘mindful’ of content  

Experts say that the government has no grounds to make these demands to TikTok, and the conditions are as vague as the original reason for the ban.

Yet, the other side to it is that many Nepalis are hooked to the platform which at one point before the ban consumed one third of all internet traffic. Young Nepalis were matchmaking through TikTok, it was used to recruit Nepali mercenaries for the Russian Army, and despite age restrictions young people are exposed to graphic content.

But bans and restrictions never work. The TikTok ban was seen as an effort by the government to encroach on freedom of expression. It was like parents taking away internet privileges from their children, which actually ends up increasing the attraction for its content.