Citing Madras High Court order on April 3, Government of India today banned TikTok app downloads in India. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asked Google and Apple to take down the TikTok app from their respective stores in India.
The Court said it encouraged pornography and could risk child users from sexual predators. The video-sharing app faced a massive backlash due to issues like inability to quality control, abusive and pornographic content are among significant reasons. In recent times, authorities also found instances of cyberbullying using TikTokApp.
Bytedance challenged the High Court order in India’s Supreme Court citing freedom of speech rights in the country. In response, the top court referred the case back to the state court, where the company’s request was rejected and implemented a ban on the app.
TikTok is a video-sharing app allowing users to create short videos with special effects. Users can voice over popular songs, dialogues using the TikTok App. It claims to have 500 million users worldwide including more than 120 million in India. It’s a major rival to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and other social networking sites.
The app was still available on Apple’s App Store till Tuesday’s midnight, but it is now entirely blocked in the country. Whereas, Google’s Play Store instantly blocked the downloads in India after receiving a request from the concerned Ministry.
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The company employed around 250 people in India for app development and keeping a tap on the content. It is a sudden setback for Bytedance, and now it would be interesting to see how the company responds back.
