The immensely famous video sharing app TikTok has finally faced the wrath of the Indian government after an interim order from the Madras High Court directed the government to ban the platform. It seems the order has come to effect with Google and Apple removing the app from Play Store and App Store respectively. TikTok has a user base of over half a billion people of which 119 million users hail from Indian land. A majority of these users are teenagers and even children who are pretty active on this platform.
TikTok is a platform for creating short, funny videos and it came under the government’s radar for allegedly allowing sleazy and explicit content to attract the user base in India. The app was also alleged to be a hunting ground for pedophiles and several countries share the same opinion on the same.
After receiving a PIL earlier this year 2019, the Madras High Court passed an interim order on the 3rd of April instructing the government to ban the app. The matter was then escalated to the Supreme Court which refused to stay the order and said it would hear the case on 22nd April. Now when the app is removed from the Play Store and App Store, there are numerous reasons people think are behind this decision. Many people have suffered critical accidents and even have died in some cases while filming TikTok videos.
A report from Economic Times says that TikTok, in response to the ban, has characterized the ban as discriminatory, disproportionate, and arbitrary and has refused to comment on the incident. The platform has defended itself by saying that it cannot be held liable for what third-party apps/people upload on its platform. This was the same argument used by Facebook and YouTube when they faced a similar situation of being questioned about their content.
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