“Douyin” is becoming more and more popular in China with the emergence of short video social software. The international version of “Douyin” (TikTok) has emerged in the global stage. However, with the continuous expansion of Tiktok’s overseas market, in order to pursue user traffic and attention, its content is gradually changing, vulgar pornography and other content problems emerge in endlessly, affecting the healthy development of short video social software. Tiktok has attracted the attention of overseas police and government because of its large amount of vulgar and pornographic content. In February 2020, the legislator asked the government to take action to prohibit the use of the TikTok in India. On June 29, 2020, India banned 59 apps from China, including TikTok. The ban is implemented under section 69A of India’s Information Technology Act 2000 (“power to issue instructions to prevent public access to any information through any computer resource”).
Relevant data show that Tiktok has 20 million active users in India in January 2020 alone. Indian Tiktok users account for a quarter of Tiktok’s global user base, and the data is still rising. So far, the app has more than 1 billion downloads, 300 million users and 12 million daily active users in India. During the period when it was forced off shelves due to vulgar content, the app lost nearly 1 million new users every day, with a daily loss of up to $500,000. In addition, the ban also let Tencent suffer, a lot of Tencent applications have also been banned. In April 2020, the Indian government ordered a review of investment from China and other countries, which hit Tencent and other companies. And the impacts on users in the India is that they can no longer access any videos — it deprived users from entertainment, a budding alternative media source, and in many cases income.
The high court of Chennai in India removed Tiktok from Google play store and Apple store on April 3, 2020, claiming that the app affected minors by pornography and other harmful content. But recently, Tiktok won the trust of the Indian court after its parent company, Bytedance, filed an appeal. The Indian court reversed the decision and allowed the app to be put on the shelves again.
As the Indian government lifted the Tiktok ban, Tiktok said: “we will continue to enhance the security features of our applications and increase the content audit efforts to prove our commitment to Indian users.” In this era of rapid development of the Internet, the existence of short video social software plays an important role in the integration and dissemination of social information to a certain extent. However, in the face of the lack of regulatory policies and the pursuit of user traffic on the platform, an endless stream of vulgar content leads to chaos in the industry. Therefore, if Tiktok wants to develop healthily and sustainably overseas, it needs to carry out strategic cooperation with relevant governments, jointly supervise and audit the platform content, and ensure the green and healthy operation environment of the platform.
Reference list:
