The government on Thursday lifted the ban on popular Chinese video-sharing app TikTok, after almost nine months.

A Cabinet meeting on Thursday decided to lift the ban, a minister said. The government has given ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, a three-month deadline to comply with certain terms and conditions.

“The government has decided to allow TikTok to resume operations, but under certain conditions,” said Prithvi Subba Gurung, minister for Communication and Information Technology.

As per Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s instruction to treat all social media equally, and to formulate necessary laws and regulations, the ministry prepared a proposal that led to the decision, Gurung said.

TikTok is now required to fulfil four conditions before it can resume operations in Nepal.

“Now onwards, TikTok has to help promote Nepal's tourism; invest in digital literacy efforts; support to uplift Nepal's public education system; and be mindful of the language used on its platform,” said Gurung outlining the conditions.

“After TikTok assured the government that it would fulfil these conditions, we decided in principle to allow TikTok to resume operations in Nepal,” he added.

Gurung said that all social media platforms, not just TikTok, must comply with the rules and regulations. “They cannot allow content that disrupts social harmony.”

On August 8, the prime minister had held a meeting with Minister Gurung and senior officials from several government agencies to discuss the issue.

The ban was first imposed on November 13 by the then Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led government citing concerns about TikTok’s negative impact on society.

Observers say the TikTok issue is part of a broader global geopolitical struggle between the US and China.

About two weeks ago, TikTok's South Asia division emailed Minister Gurung some two weeks ago, requesting that the ban be lifted and assuring compliance with all of the country’s rules and regulations.

After internal discussions and negotiations with TikTok, the Singapore-based company agreed to the conditions, a senior official at the prime minister's office said. “Following this, the government decided to lift the ban.”

The government restricted TikTok after introducing the ‘Directives on the Operation of Social Networking 2023’ in November last year.

The directives require social media sites such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and YouTube, among others, to set up liaison offices in Nepal.

The government had said that this measure was introduced in response to an increasing number of complaints from users. The absence of these companies’ representatives in Nepal had made it difficult for the authorities to address users’ concerns and remove objectionable content from these platforms.

The directives also set forth a 19-point not-to-do list for users on platforms like Facebook, X, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

The directives state that no one should create fake IDs on social media or share or make comments through such IDs. Likewise, people should not post any text, audio, video or picture that spreads hatred against any gender, community, caste, religion, profession, or people from any particular group.

The directives also ban posts that promote illegal activities such as child labour, human trafficking, child marriage, or polygamy.

According to the officials, in recent communications, the Policy Committee Division of South Asia office of TikTok has expressed its commitment to follow all the rules and regulations and comply with the conditions set by the government of Nepal. This led the government to reconsider and eventually lift the ban.

Earlier TikTok had sent seven letters to the Nepal government, requesting the ban be lifted.

In the letter, TikTok said that the ban was causing financial losses both to the company and the country.

After the ban, many people started using virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass local censorship. But gradually, most of them have switched to Facebook and Instagram Reels, which also allow users to create and upload video clips.

A VPN establishes a secure connection between a user’s device and a remote server operated by a VPN provider. This creates an encrypted tunnel that masks the user’s internet protocol address, protecting personal data and allowing them to bypass website blocks and firewalls.

Internet service providers said that TikTok accounts for nearly 40 percent of internet bandwidth consumption in Nepal. Even after the ban, overall internet usage did not decline as many users continued to use VPNs.

Before the ban, there were around 2.2 million TikTok users in Nepal, according to the Internet Service Providers’ Association of Nepal.

Following the government decision, two telecommunications service providers—Nepal Telecom and Ncell—along with more than 30 internet service providers blocked TikTok.

The former government's decision to ban TikTok was widely criticised by experts and the public, who cited it as an attack on freedom of expression and speech.

Internet experts said that it is difficult to ban technology entirely. People often find alternative ways to access service, so a complete ban is counterproductive. Instead, they suggested that the government should focus on implementing ‘regulatory technology’ or RegTech.

RegTech is the use of information technology to enhance regulatory and compliance processes.