“It’s not a hasty reaction”

MADRID Dec. 23 () –

The Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, defended this Sunday the closure of the audiovisual content platform TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, for reasons of child safety, a day after announcing the beginning of preparations to suspend access after the November murder of a 14-year-old student.

“The ban on TikTok for (at least) a year in Albania is not a hasty reaction to an isolated incident, but a carefully considered decision made in consultation with parent communities in schools across the country,” he told through your profile on the social network X.

Rama has maintained that “TikTok has no reason to demand clarifications from Albania” because “it is the Albanians who make the decisions” and “not the owners of the algorithm” of the aforementioned platform. “Either TikTok protects Albania’s children, or Albania will protect its children from TikTok,” he said.

In this sense, he has acknowledged that his country “may be too small to require” a platform like TikTok to protect children and adolescents “from the terrifying traps of its algorithm”, but he has said that he “sincerely hopes that TikTok takes this step.” measure for the benefit of humanity, including Albania.”

The Albanian head of government has indicated that “claiming that the murder of the teenager has no connection with TikTok because the conflict did not originate on the platform demonstrates a lack of understanding of the seriousness of the threat” that it represents for young people today. “as the logic behind” their decision to “take responsibility for addressing this threat.”

The Government of Albania has taken this decision following the murder in mid-November of a 14-year-old student from a well-known school in the country’s capital, Tirana, which has sparked an intense debate in the Albanian Parliament about violence in schools and their relationship with social networks.