Heena Sharma Blog

An Indian court's call for a ban on the popular video app TikTok will hurt free speech rights, China's Bytedance Technology Co has said in a request for the Supreme Court to quash the directive. Bytedance is one of the world's most valuable start-ups and its TikTok app lets users create and share short videos with special effects. It has become popular in rural India, where most of a population of 1.3 billion lives. TikTok, whose video-only interface makes it easier to use than platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, has been downloaded more than 240 million times in India, says app analytics firm Sensor Tower. A ban "amounts to curtailing of the rights of the citizens of India...who have been using the platform everyday to express themselves and create content," the company said in a court filing reviewed by Reuters, asking for the order to be quashed. The company's Monday filing is not public and has not previously been reported. The Supreme Cou...

The Madras High Court on Wednesday asked the federal government to ban Chinese video app TikTok, saying it was “encouraging pornography”. Created by Beijing Bytedance Technology Co, TikTok allows users to create and share short videos with special effects. It has become hugely popular in rural India, home to most of the country’s 1.3 billion people. Jokes, clips and footage related to India’s thriving movie industry dominate the platform, along with memes and videos in which youngsters, some scantily clad, lip-sync and dance to popular music. Speaking to Reuters in February, the IT minister of Tamil Nadu described some of its more suggestive dance content as “unbearable”, while a Hindu nationalist group close to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for the app to be banned. Also in February, the BJP’s chief of information technology, Amit Malviya, said the party was tracking TikTok conversations and called it “a brilliant medium for creative expression”. The Madr...