TikTok Is Banned In India For Spreading Pornography

The Madras High Court has decided to make an outright ban on TikTok, the platform for short-form mobile videos. The app is now illegal in Tamil Nadu, and the court is seeking a nation-wide prohibition.

This move against TikTok is right after a similar act on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a highly popular battle royale game, for causing addiction. The complete ban on PUBG is imposed on many Indian states.

The reasons the court put forward for the ban is that the huge video sharing platform helps spread an inappropriate culture and support pornography. It also has questionable content, which can cause social issues and even lead to health problems among its audience, mostly Indian teens.

Justice N Kirubakaran and Justice SS Sundar led the bench. They referred to pornography and other disturbing content as well as the popularity of this platform among children as the primary causes leading to the banning decision. Apart from ordering a prohibition on downloading TikTok, the bench also forbade media agencies to broadcast any content produced by this video platform.

Another suggestion made by the court is a new law to protect children against the questionable content on the Internet, which is much the same as the U.S’s Children’s Online Privacy Protect Act.

TikTok was named musical.ly and later renamed after the $1 billion acquisition of ByteDance. Ever since it appeared on the Indian market, its number of users in the country has been continuously growing, reaching 39% in the total number of 500 million users worldwide.

TikTok’s users mostly fall into the age group of 16 to 24 years old. Thanks to the platform, several people have become influencers and received endorsement contracts from brands.

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The platform was recently being summoned by the parliamentary committee before the India election. That, plus the concern over fake news have led to the appointment of Sandhya Sharma as the new director of public policy. The company also maintain a team to supervise its content in over 20 nations all over the world.