We reported last week India banned all new downloads of TikTok due to questionable content. However, now an Indian state court has lifted the ban.
An Indian state court is allowing the app to return to both Apple and Google app stores in India, according to Reuters. The ban was put in place in the first place because a High Court in Madras ruled TikTok was promoting pornography and other questionable content to children. It’s important to note that this ban only affected people who hadn’t downloaded the app yet. Those with the app already installed weren’t banned from using it.
Though the ban was short lived, it took its toll
It turns out that the ban hit TikTok’s owner Bytedance hard. Reportedly, the company said in a court filing it was losing $500,000 daily because of the ban. The ban also put over 250 jobs at risk.
India is a large and continuously growing market for TikTok as internet become much more accessible in the country. There’s nearly 300 million users in the country, 120 million active users, and over 1 billion total downloads, according to Sensor Tower.
When TikTok was baned in the country, TikTok lost a huge growing market.
Banned for inappropriate content
Some Indian politicians and parents claim the app hosts lots of inappropriate content that is accessible to minors. The Tamil Nadu court agreed that is could expose children to sexual predators and ruled against TikTok.
However, TikTok said that the amount of inappropriate videos on its platform are “very miniscule.” Plus the company argued it had removed over 6 million videos that had violated its terms of use and community guidelines after looking at the content created in India.
What if the banned stayed?
Had the ban stayed in place, it probably wouldn’t just be TikTok seeing legal action taken against is hosting questionable content. Other social media platforms like YouTube could face the same legal ban as TikTok did.
Regardless, the ban on TikTok is now lifted. However, it still raises the question if these platforms are doing enough to regulate their content. There’s support for both sides of the argument. But, we’re happy that there is a discussion about that. A full out ban on this platforms ending any kind of dialogue isn’t a good solution to the problem.
Image courtesy adageindia.in
