India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology recently brought the banhammer down on the China-made app, TikTok, along with a whole list of other apps that originate from China. Specifically, the social media platform is now one of 59 apps that have been placed on the country’s ban list.
This isn’t the first time India and the TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, have locked horns before. Back in April last year, the company received its first ban from the Indian court and the TikTok app was subsequently removed from Google Play and Apple App Store. After the court said that it may encourage pornography and as such, could be use by sexual predators to seek out underage users.
— TikTok India (@TikTok_IN) June 30, 2020
ByteDance challenged the ban in Indian court, asserting that the ban on it was a strict violation of its freedom of speech rights. Of course, the fact that India is one of TikTok’s biggest market accounts for 30% of its two billion downloads is also a crucial reason as to why ByteDance wasn’t about to back down without a fight.
Besides TikTok, other Chinese apps that have made the list include WeChat and mobile games like Clash of Kings and Mobile Legends. As well as Xiaomi-made apps like Mi Video Call and Mi Community. It’s still unclear what reason India is to ban TikTok, many are speculating that it’s quite possibly due to the geopolitical tensions between India and China.
On another note, the ban could have also been brought on by the fact that TikTok was recently caught liberally utilising the clipboard feature on Apple’s iOS 14; one new feature on the upcoming OS is a clipboard monitor, a feature alerted one user to the app’s constant “clipboarding” activities every one to three keystrokes.
(Source: The Verge, Indian Express, PIB India)
