TikTok has been taken down from Google Play Store and Apple App Store in India following an order by the Supreme Court of India. The popular video making app has been alleged to encourage "pornography" in the country following which a ban was issued by the Madras High Court. ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, had appealed their case to the Supreme Court for a stay to be put on the ban.
After the courts ruling, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had asked both Google and Apple to de-list TikTok from their respective app stores. As of writing this report, we can confirm that the video making app is no longer available on the Play Store and App Store in India.
Earlier, TikTok had released a statement saying that the company is committed to improve and add new moderation features in order to curb misuse of their platform.
The app has had quite a few run-ins with the law. It was temporarily banned in Indonesia on grounds of hosting illegal content on its platform and was fined by the Federal Trade Commission in the US of 5.7 million USD for acquiring information from kids under the age of 13. It was then that TikTok added a kids mode to the app which only allowed users to view and record content.
TikTok has managed to add over 88.6 million users in Q1 2019 itself and now with the ban in effect, the download numbers are surely in for a toss at least on Google and Apple app stores.
Having said that, the app is still accessible to the ones who have it downloaded on their phones. In addition, interested people can always side-load the app to gain access from India.
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