FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
In the last days of 2024, Prime Minister Edi Rama rushed to announce the closure of the TikTok platform for at least 1 year in Albania, using as an argument a serious event, where a 9-year-old school student in central Tirana was stabbed to death by a peer.
In record time, it was discovered that the cause of the fight between the teenagers had started on TikTok, thus placing responsibility on the platform.
Rama appeared determined to close the platform, and even announced measures to launch it in the first days of January 2025.
Today, during a conversation at the Department of Journalism at the University of Tirana, where he held a special conversation with two students of this faculty, Rama said that we have raised our concerns and, for the moment, we have no other choice but to close TikTok.
He stressed that Albanian authorities are in dialogue with the platform, adding that "they have not been indifferent to our concerns."
'I think we have no other solution at the moment. We are in dialogue with Tiktok, presenting our solutions. The good thing is that they have not been refractory to these concerns. And we have agreed that at a reasonable time when they are ready, they will present us with some proposals to address these concerns.
Since you are the journalism department here and you are the guardians of the language. One of the points is that Tiktok does not have a filter for the Albanian language. And so if another language cannot reach the words that should not be used to occupy the virtual space of TikTok, in Albanian there are no filters. I have the impression that although it is a unique challenge to defeat the young people of this field, a VPN from another country will not have it easy. However, never say never with this generation that is coming to us,' he said.
On January 21, 2025, during the meeting in Davos, where the World Economic Forum was held, Rama discussed with Christine Grahn, TikTok's head of Government Relations and Public Policy for Europe.
During the meeting with Grahn, Rama outlined the concerns that led to the decision to temporarily close access to the platform from Albania. The Prime Minister announced that the meeting also discussed possible ways for the company to address these concerns.
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