Madras High Court earlier in the month urged the central government to ban Tik Tok in India over the reports of unabated circulation of vulgar content on its video sharing platform and the most serious charge include children getting access to these age-inappropriate clips.
On Monday (April 15), Tik Tok urged Supreme Court to put a stay on ban order, but the former dismissed the petition but announced a follow-up hearing on April 22 to review the outcome of the review petition in Madras court slated for hearing later today (April 16).
"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 the content generated by our users in India," Tik Tok said to International Business Times, India Edition.
As a double whammy, now, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has asked top mobile leaders Apple and Google to take down the Tik Tok from their respective App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android platforms, reported The Economic Times.
As of now, Tik Tok is still available for download on both the platforms, but it won't be for long. It is being said that those who have already installed the app, they can continue to use it, but new users won't be able to find Tik Tok on app stores in coming days.
However, Tik Tok as already brought in stringent regulations to curb aforementioned nefarious activities in addition to protecting children from predators and thwarting cyberbullying with a self-defined filter to stop users from posting vulgar and abusive messages in the comment section.
With the help of content moderation technology and a robust human moderation team, the company has deleted six million videos for violating its Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Community Policies, since July 2018. If the user is a serial offender, his or her users' accounts will be terminated that. This team, which is based in over 20 countries and regions including India, covers major Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and more.
Also, Tik Tok has brought in age-limit to access the video-sharing app. Only users who are 13 years or above to login and create an account on TikTok and it has also incorporated additional safety mechanisms to ensure that underage users do not use the platform.
Tik Tok is expected to release a follow-up statement after the Madras High Court announces the verdict on the review petition. Stay tuned for latest updates.
