Government Asks Apple And Google To Take Down TikTok From App Stores

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has reportedly asked Google and Apple to remove the Chinese video sharing application TikTok from their app stores. This development comes just a day after the Supreme Court had rejected TikTok’s plea to stay a Madras High Court order from April 3, to put a ban on the app’s downloads.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on April 3 passed an order directing the government to prohibit downloading of TikTok in the country. The matter was then taken to the Supreme Court, which refused to stay the order on the grounds that the matter was still sub-judice and that it would hear the matter on 22 April.

According to an ET report, TikTok has characterised the order as disproportionate, discriminatory and arbitrary and made no comment on the ban. In its defence, TIkTok states that it can’t be held liable for the kind of content that ‘third-parties’ upload on the platform. This is the same argument used by the likes of Facebook and YouTube when defending the content shared on their respective platforms.

TikTok’s official statement:
“As per the proceedings in the Supreme Court today, the Madras High Court will hear the matter on ex parte ad interim order. The Supreme Court has listed the matter again for April 22, 2019, to be apprised of the outcome of the hearing on the April 16th, 2019 before the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court. At TikTok, we have faith in the Indian Judicial system and the stipulations afforded to social media platforms by the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011. We are committed to continuously enhancing our existing measures and introducing additional technical and moderation processes as part of our ongoing commitment to our users in India. In line with this, we have been stepping up efforts to take down objectionable content. To date, we have removed over 6 million videos that violated our Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, following an exhaustive review of content generated by our users in India.”―News18