Image courtesy Ameya Nagarajan, based on image by motionstock from Pixabay, under a Pixabay license. This piece was first published by SMEX, on January 19, 2023, and was written by Zeinab Ismail. An edited version is republished here, under a content-sharing agreement. TikTok is still banned in Jordan, a month after the government blocked the platform to limit the spread of live footage documenting workers’ protests in Ma’an. The Chinese company that owns the app, ByteDance, made no direct or public comment about the ban but confirmed that it is in talks with the authorities to “continue serving the millions of users” in Jordan. In mid-December, truck drivers took to the streets to protest the rise in fuel prices in the Ma’an governorate, to the south of Amman, and were broadcasting the movement live on TikTok. Taxi and public bus owners also took part in the protests, and shops in several cities also held strikes. A senior police officer and three policemen were killed. On December 16, 2022, Jordanian authorities announced a temporary ban on TikTok due to “misuse by some” in addition to the “platform’s failure to address posts inciting violence and chaos,” according to a statement published on the Facebook page of the Public Security Directorate. The directorate warned that the Cybercrime Unit is monitoring content shared on social media platforms with an eye out for hate speech and “incitement to vandalism, aggression against law enforcement agencies, damage to property, and road blocking.” News about internet shutdowns and how TikTok stopped working began circulating as soon as the protests broke out. In an interview with SMEX, Raya Sharbain, Jordan-based digital rights expert and advocate, stated that Ma’an Governorate residents suffered not only from the TikTok ban, but also from complete internet shutdowns in Ma’an and Karak during the day, which continued until December 26. TikTok played a key role in reporting news related to the protests across different regions within Jordan. It also carried the reach of the events beyond national borders. A Jordanian activist who preferred to remain anonymous for security reasons revealed to SMEX that: “News websites in Jordan are mostly loyal to local authorities and act as their spokespeople. Therefore, we filmed videos and shared them on social media, mainly on TikTok, since it facilitates content dissemination and sharing. Our alternative solutions provoked them [the authorities] into shutting down the internet and banning TikTok, thus keeping us isolated from the world.” In fact, journalists were following the news and the latest developments through TikTok rather than local media outlets, as Sawsan Abu Al Sondos, a journalist residing in Amman, confirmed in a statement to SMEX. She explained that TikTok “is a popular, video-based platform that is user-friendly for people of all ages and backgrounds wishing to express their opinion.” Due to the restrictions imposed by authorities, people use Virtual Private Network (VPN) software to circumvent the ban and post their videos. Sharbain affirmed that TikTok’s popularity in Jordan made it the go-to tool used by protesters to report events and updates. According to the Public Security Directorate, “TikTok did not properly address the misuse of the platform by people who praised and disseminated acts of violence or called for chaos.” However, the Directorate did not clarify whether or not it had contacted the platform about these issues. In an interview with local media on January 8, the Jordanian Minister of Government Communications Faisal Shboul stated that “the government is having ongoing technical discussions with TikTok, in an attempt to control the content on the platform.” He confirmed that the government will not lift the ban any time soon “unless content-control conditions are met.” Shboul also warned that “account owners will be held responsible for comments added on their posts.” Jordanian Minister of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship Ahmad Hanandeh confirmed on January 15 that there is no news about lifting the TikTok ban in the kingdom, and the app remains banned in Jordan, according to what we documented through the ban test conducted on the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).