TikTok is one of the wildly popular apps in India right now. But the Bytedance-owned Chinese short video app is facing scrutiny in several countries like the US and India. In its first transparency report, TikTok revealed that India made the highest number of legal requests for content removal and user information in 2019.
The Indian government accounted for 47% of the total requests made by all countries to TikTok last year. Between January 2019 to June 2019, India sent a total of 107 requests to the company demanding user information. Out of these requests, 99 were legal requests, whereas eight of them were labelled as emergency requests by TikTok.
Apart from these, there were 11 requests to TikTok to take down content from the platform — in response to which, TikTok took down eight accounts and also removed four videos from the platform.
After India, the second and third spot was taken by the US and Japan respectively with 79 and 35 requests made to TikTok.
TikTok Banned By US Army
Meanwhile, the US Army has banned TikTok due to security concerns.
“It is considered a cyber threat,” said a US Army spokesperson. “We do not allow it on government phones.”
The US authorities are concerned that the video app owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance, could compromise national security or be used to influencing or surveilling Americans.
TikTok’s Scuffle With India
Back in April 2019, the Madras High Court in India passed an order to ban TikTok after it was found that the app exposes children to pornography and makes them vulnerable to sexual predators online.
After the ban, both Google and Apple were asked to remove TikTok from their app stores. In July 2019, TikTok was issued notices over alleged “anti-national” activities.
Despite the controversies, TikTok’s comeback in India was even more spectacular and now it has more than 200 million users in India.
