However, on April 3 a court in southern Tamil Nadu state asked the federal Indian government to ban the app on grounds that it encouraged pornography, and warned that sexual predators could target child users. The app has been downloaded more than 240 million times in the country, according to a report from app analytics firm Sensor Tower in February. TikTok, developed by China-based Bytedance Technology, lets users create and share short-form videos enhanced with digital effects, a formula that has proved a huge hit in India. Fans and detractors weighed in with memes, jokes and TikTok videos to mourn its suspension or celebrate it.Apple has removed TikTok from its App Store in India to comply with a government demand to block downloads of the video sharing app over child safety concerns. Meanwhile, the hashtag #TikTokban was a trending topic on Twitter for much of Wednesday. However, the group also urged the government to begin a public process to create a formal technology policy to protect children. The Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights group in New Delhi, wrote to India’s technology ministry on Wednesday, denouncing the blanket bans as “reactionary and disproportionate” and saying they violated Indians’ right to free speech. Other major internet platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Google’s YouTube struggle with the same issue and could theoretically face similar bans. Waris said that restricting an app like TikTok over content it couldn’t control was a slippery slope. Indonesia prohibited it last July, citing objectionable content, but restored access a week later. Bangladesh banned it two months ago as part of a crackdown on pornography. “There is a belief that Chinese apps are a threat to national security," said Salman Waris, an expert in international technology law at TechLegis in New Delhi.īut India and the United States are not the only countries concerned about the app. Some Indian officials suspect that China’s government is using popular Chinese apps to scoop up private data on Indians. ![]() TikTok, which is owned by Bytedance, a company based in Beijing, has come under additional scrutiny in India because of its national origin. It is considering requiring tech companies to automatically censor a wide range of content and other policies that would promote Indian firms and rein in foreign tech companies. More broadly, India’s central government is wrestling with an overhaul of its rules governing online services. About 20 people, many of them students, have been charged with violating the ban, according to local news reports. Officials argued that the game, a mobile multiplayer shooter owned by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent, distracted children from their studies. Last month, several cities and districts in Gujarat, the home state of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, banned PUBG, another app popular with young people. That has left communities struggling to cope with technology’s influence on their children. Internet companies in the United States are supposed to seek such consent before allowing children to use their services, but India has no such regulations. In February, the Federal Trade Commission announced a $5.7 million settlement with TikTok over accusations that it obtained and shared personal information such as names and photos from children under 13 without parental consent. ![]() ![]() TikTok’s lax controls have also incurred the wrath of American regulators. The company noted that it had stepped up its efforts to remove objectionable content and had already taken down six million videos in India. “We have faith in the Indian judicial system,” TikTok said in a statement on Wednesday. ![]() The court issued its initial order without giving TikTok a chance to respond to the allegations. “The government has the social responsibility to prevent these kinds of applications,” the two-judge panel wrote as it ordered an interim ban on downloads of the app. The Indian court hearing the TikTok case issued a rambling order this month reciting the petitioner’s claims that TikTok was filled with pornography, exposed young people to sexual predators, spoiled the mind and prompted people to commit suicide. In India, the app has been caught up in a bigger debate over the inability of social media to stop the spread of false information, the dangers to children posed by mobile technology and the vast influence of American and Chinese technology giants.
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