National

How the Chinese app TikTok became a craze in India and how government restrictions affected people?

Pic credit: Gizbot

TikTok held its first Creator Lab event in India at the Jazzy Sea-Facing venue in Mumbai in June 2019. The company owned by ByteDance, a Chinese multinational internet technology company, brought together more than 500 inventors and influencers from across the country to continue to dominate our vast economy. 

From synergistic workshops and uplifting talks to live games and food painting, it held a reflection to the real people of India, many of whom came from distant towns and cities. This established the democratic nature of the platform, which defines the traditional boundaries of caste, creed, color, community, and content in a high-status conscious India. TikTok was handy and most importantly available in 14 Indian languages, which made the platform more accessible than most of its competitors like Likee, or other such apps. 

Pic credit: Livemint

Nikkil Gandhi, Head of Tikkok, India, stated that "For the first time for the internet users, Tiktok has democratized the Internet by making it available in 14 million Indian languages, with millions of users, artists, storytellers and teachers relying on it for their livelihood.” In just two years, India became TikTok's largest market with over 200 million users. At the end of April 2020, when TikTok exceeded two billion downloads globally, it came out that India was its largest contributor. 

But, with the tensions escalating between the two nations – India and China, amid covid-19 pandemic, whose epicenter was China itself, Indian government due to security reasons and obnoxious contents, pulled out TikTok along with 58 other Chinese Apps from Indian App stores, which came as a huge shock for the Chinese economy as well as for the artists who was a regular user of the App. 

While many youths welcomed this ban by the Indian government and stood by the support of banishing, there were also many people who gave a thumps down to the decision and claimed that their livelihood will be affected. Many TikTokers stated that they gained many followers from the app, but the banning of the app was not justifiable. They also said that apart from banning, Indian government should have focused on removing hateful contents from the platform. 

However, there were some other TikTokers who appreciated the idea of pulling out the app, as the Chinese were stealing Indian data and the app was also designed as such that anyone could be addicted to it. They found a way out of this by posting their videos or content on YouTube.