TikTok has been one heck of an addictive app of late across the world. It has been learnt that out of half a billion users, at least 119 million are known to be Indian and those are all kids and teenagers (majority wise)
TikTok is an app that allows you to share short clips and the idea is to use dance or lip sync to ‘background music or movie dialogues’ to create the most viral clip. Recently, the app faced a massive backlash for exposing younger ones to “inappropriate” content.
Though it has massive growth in India, it has come largely under fire for promoting misleading content. It has also faced a ban a few months ago in April and now the situation has gone from bad to worse. There are possibilities that TikTok could get permanently banned In India after July 22 for promoting anti-national activities.
The Cyber Laws and e-Security division of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (aka MeitY) sent a notice to the creators of TikTok and Helo ByteDance to reply to 24 questions, after a complaint by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) to the PM, where it alleged that the platforms are being used for encouraging and promoting anti-national and obscene activities.
As per the reports, the complaint against TikTok talks about a video being shared where 3 users allegedly talk about anti-national activities. The video including the infringing users have seemingly been taken off from the platform.
As per NDTV, MeitY sought a response from TikTok and Helo on the infamous allegation against them, that these platforms have become “a hub of anti-national activities”. They have asked for TikTok ByteDance to clarify and reassure that none of the Indian user data is being transferred or will be transferred to any foreign government or private entity presently or in the future.
The ministry also asked questions regarding underage TikTok users, the way it monitors, deletes inappropriate content, including the process of collection of data of its users. In addition to that, it has also sought an explanation from Helo on their ‘alleged 11,000 morphed political ads’ and ‘fake news campaign’.
MeitY asked for the answers by 22nd July 2019 and any failure to deliver appropriate responses to these queries could result in the applications getting banned from the application stores in India.
In reply to the current situation, TikTok and Helo described that they’ll completely co-operate with the government. The statement said, “Our continued success in India will not be possible without the support of our local community. We take our responsibilities to this community seriously and welcome this opportunity to fully collaborate with the Government to meet and exceed our obligations.”