April 17, 2019
The supreme court of India has ordered to take down Tiktok, the Chinese-owned video sharing app over the spread of pornographic material and encouraging pedophiles.
The app claims to have almost 500 million users worldwide with more than 120 million users in India alone. Bangladesh has already banned the app and United States has hit the app with heavy fine for collecting information from children illegally.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India ordered the Google store and app store to remove the app after Supreme court refused the appeal of Tiktok to lift a previous order from a high court in Chennai.
The order will stop new downloads of the app, however the users who have already downloaded the app will still be able to use it.
ByteDance, owner of TikTok, has petitioned against the order and insist that the company cannot be held liable for third parties’ action. Bytedance claimed that it had removed six million videos in India which infringed the guidelines.
Nepal recently banned an online game called PUBG over alleged addiction and violent behavior in users. These cases of censorship from government have also sparked criticism over the freedom of speech and expression.
