Just days after the Nepali government issued a nationwide ban on PUBG, popular video sharing app TikTok just got banned in India following a ruling by the Madras High Court. The Court ordered Google and Apple to remove the app from their respective stores citing concerns that it was being used to spread pornography. TikTok has more than 120 million users in India, so the move is very likely to ruffle some feathers. However, users who have already downloaded the app to their device shouldn’t be affected. Besides, Android users can still sideload the APK which should be available online with relative ease.
TikTok lets users lip-sync with copyrighted music, allowing users to create a wide range of content. It has been the spawning ground of several memes that eventually make their way to the open internet. This isn’t the first time the app got into trouble, though. Earlier this year in the US, TikTok was fined $5.7 Million for illegally harvesting data off children.
A spokesperson for TikTok said the firm had “faith in the Indian judicial system” and that it was “optimistic about an outcome that would be well received” by its userbase. TikTok’s parent company ByteDance claims that a “very minuscule” proportion of TikTok content was considered inappropriate or obscene. It had also said that it removed over 6 million videos that violated its ‘’Terms of Use and Community Guidelines’, following a review of the content generated by its users in India.
It is anybody’s guess as to where the Madras High Court inferred that the platform is being used to distribute ‘pornographic content’. Yes, the app has had a troubled past, but then again, so has everyone else. A lot of users have already installed the app and will continue using it regardless of the ban. It’s not like there are going to be TikTok squads roaming around arresting people who made a “hit or miss” parody. This looks like yet another instance of inept parents asking the state to raise their children because taking your kid’s smartphone away when they use it too much is too hard, apparently.
Source: Economic Times
