Government of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) asked Google and Apple to take down Tik Tok from their Play Store and App Store respectively. The order comes after Supreme Court refused to stay order on Madras Court verdict over Tik Tok ban due to porn and other illegal content in its platform. SC will hear the case again on 24th April.
Tik Tok has the biggest user base in India with over 120 million active users. Tik Tok added almost 88 million new users in India in the last quarter.
The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on April 3 passed an order directing the government to prohibit downloading of the Tik Tok app in the country. It also ensures that no media publication show any of the videos from the platform.
This is not the first time that Tik Tok is under the fire of the government. A few months ago Tik Tok was fined $5.7 million by FTC in the US over violating child protection policy.
It should also be noted that the user who has already downloaded the app, will not be affected by the decision.
“We have faith in the Indian judicial system and we are optimistic about an outcome that would be well received by over 120 million monthly active users in India,” TikTok said in a statement Tuesday. In its petition to the Supreme Court last week, ByteDance said it cannot be held liable for actions of third parties on the platform. The app was like any other social media platform, it said, adding that singling out Tik Tok was discriminatory and arbitrary.
Last month the company removed 6 million videos from its platform saying that those do not comply with the terms of use and community guidelines.
At this time Google already removed Tik Tok from their Play Store. Although Apple user still can download the app from App Store.
Tik Tok is not the only one facing these types of the problem alone. Social Media app relies on the user-generated content, are having the same issue. The companies argued that they are not responsible for what people produced in their platform. But that has left a large gap where content is not policed as well as it should be. Some of these companies argued that as they rely on user-generated content for growth, making platform censored can make their platform less appealing.
