Why India banned wildly popular viral video app TikTok

Speculation that video app TikTok could be banned in Australia has been dismissed by the company, but we wouldn’t be the first country.

TikTok’s less than a month old expansion into Australia has gotten off to a rocky start and there are already calls for the app to be banned here.

Politicians have expressed concern about the data the app collects, where it goes and who can access it (not all of those politicians will put their name to the claim, including the unnamed federal MP who accused the app of being a data gathering arm of the Chinese Communist Party in a Herald-Sun report that started much of the current discussion around the app).

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Governments around the world are increasingly scrutinising TikTok. Picture: Sajjad Hussain / AFP

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It’s possible TikTok could be called before a Senate inquiry into foreign interference on social media (which is also possible for other social media apps like Facebook and Twitter and their local representatives).

TikTok Australia’s local general manager Lee Hunter has said the company “always welcome the opportunity to meet with policy makers to talk about TikTok”.

But while debate rages here about whether the app should be banned, one country of more than a billion people has already told the app to kick rocks.

Members of the City Youth Organisation in Hyderabad hold posters supporting the government’s decision to bank TikTok and other apps from Chinese firms. Picture: Noah Seelam / AFP

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TikTok was one of 59 “prejudicial” apps from Chinese developers recently banned by the Indian government during a time of ongoing tension between the two neighbouring countries over their disputed border, which has resulted in deadly skirmishes.

India’s information technology ministry said the newly banned apps “are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”.

It said the ministry “has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India”.

“The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures,” the ministry added.

A member of the Working Journalist of India (WJI) holds a placard urging citizens to remove Chinese apps. Picture: Prakash Singh / AFP

An Indian man shows the TikTok logo on his phone. Picture: Narinder Nanu / AFP

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India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre inside its home affairs ministry also sent “exhaustive” recommendations for blocking the 59 “malicious” apps.

Citizens in the country raised concerns to the IT ministry about security of data and breach of privacy.

There have also been “similar bipartisan concerns, flagged by various public representatives, both outside and inside the parliament of India”.

“On the basis of these and upon receiving of recent credible inputs that such apps pose threats to sovereignty and integrity of India, the Government of India has decided to disallow the usage of certain apps, used in both mobile and non-mobile internet enabled devices.

“This move will safeguard the interests of [tens of millions] of Indian mobile and internet users,” the ministry said, adding the decision was “a targeted move to ensure safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace”.

TikTok is first on the list of banned apps, alongside others from Chinese firms including WeChat and Weibo.

TikTok doesn’t operate in China (a similar, China-only app called Douyin, also developed by ByteDance does, and stops Chinese users seeing content from outside China), so the ban effectively locks TikTok out of its largest potential market.

Local TikTok alternatives added millions of new users following the ban. Picture: Arun Sankar / AFP

The ministry also noted than India was an emerging hub and “leading innovator” in the digital space, and several firms based in the country are now looking to capitalise on the ban and fill the void it left.

Indian TikTok rival Roposo reportedly added 22 million new users in the wake of the ban.

It’s not just Indian firms looking to capitalise either: Facebook is getting in on the action too.

Shortly after TikTok was banned, the social media giant began trialling its Instagram Reels feature in India, which is essentially the same as TikTok but without the recommendation algorithm many believe is key to the app’s success.

More than 200 million Indians had started using the app prior to the ban, more than any other country.

Instagram has started a trial of its TikTok clone Reels in India following the ban.

TikTok’s CEO Kevin Mayer (formerly of Disney) wrote to the Indian government at the end of June to say the Chinese government has never requested TikTok user data and the company wouldn’t hand it over if asked, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

“I can confirm that the Chinese government has never made a request to us for the TikTok data of Indian users,” Mr Mayer reportedly wrote, adding data for those users is stored on Singaporean servers (as is data for Australian users).

“If we do ever receive such a request in the future, we would not comply,” Mr Mayer said.

He also played up thousands of Indians employed by TikTok and reiterated TikTok’s plans to build servers in India.

A report last year from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyst Samantha Hoffman argued a propaganda arm of the Chinese government engaged in “strategic co-operation” with globally recognised Chinese brands (naming Huawei and Alibaba Cloud) for “the development of or access to capabilities that support its bulk data collection”.

If such co-operation were to exist it could mean the government didn’t actually have to make a request to access data.

Many ASPI sponsors are from overseas and one (Facebook, a “bronze sponsor”) is even a direct competitor to TikTok, part of the reason why TikTok has disputed the Institute’s credibility on other comments relating to it.