An Indian state court has reversed its ban on TikTok, permitting the short-video app to come to each Apple and Google’s app stores, per a report this morning from Reuters.
Earlier this month, India’s Ministry of physics and data Technology had ordered TikTok be faraway from app stores, once a tribunal in Madras determined the app was encouraging
pornography and other illicit content.
Though the removal only affected new users who were looking to download TikTok’s app to their devices for the first time — not those who already had it installed —
the ban was a serious blow to TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance.
The company said in a court filing the ban was resulting in a $500,000 daily loss, and was putting more than 250 jobs at risk.
India had become an outsized and growing marketplace for TikTok, with nearly 300 million users in the country out of over 1 billion total downloads, according to Sensor Tower.
(TikTok notes it had over 120 million monthly actives in India.)
India had conjointly accounted for twenty seven p.c of TikTok’s total installs between December 2017 and December 2018, Sensor Tower found, which meant the app was a huge source of TikTok’s
overall growth.
However, some Indian politicians and fogeys believe the app’s content is inappropriate, particularly with regard to its use by minors.
And the Tamil Nadu court — which ruled against TikTok — said the app could expose children to sexual predators, as well.
TikTok, meanwhile, had argued that a “very miniscule” proportion of its videos were inappropriate, and that after reviewing content created by users in India it had removed over 6 million
videos that had desecrated its terms of use and community tips.
The ban, had it been upheld, could have foretold increased legal action and regulation against other social media apps in India.
This wasn’t the first time TikTok has come under fire by government regulators.
In February, the FTC in the U.S. fined TikTok $5.7 million for violating children’s privacy law (COPPA) and required the app to implement an age gate.
ByteDance, during a statement, welcomed the court’s decision to reverse the ban, saying:
We area unit glad concerning this call and that we believe it's conjointly greatly welcome by our thriving community in Bharat, who use TikTok as a platform to showcase their creativity.
We area unit grateful for the chance to continue serving our users higher.
While we’re happy that our efforts to fight against misuse of the platform has been recognised, the work is never “done” on our end.
We area unit committed to unceasingly enhancing our safety options as a testament to our in progress commitment to our users in Bharat.
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