If you’re active on any of the social media apps, it is highly unlikely that you’ve not come across viral short videos that are mostly lip-synced. Most of these videos are created using a new age social media app called TikTok. Unlike Facebook or YouTube, TikTok is easy to use and offers a lot of tools like stickers, dialogues and background music etc. to create viral content.
This ease of use coupled with cheap high-speed mobile data has created a whole new generation of content creators who thrive by making videos on TikTok. Owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company, TikTok shot to fame when it acquired Musica.ly another such application, adding millions of users in one go.
As per an estimate almost 40 percent of its users are Indians. The app, which had acquired over 188-million new users in the last quarter, was often seen paying content creators to create and share videos on the platform.
Since most of these platforms work as an aggregator, they often do not have control measures in place to filter or moderate the videos shared using them. The content on TikTok was often found objectionable, inappropriate, promoted nudity and often pornographic in nature. As a result, it has recently been banned in India. This decision by Indian courts means that TikTok, which is the third most downloaded app for the last quarter on both Apple App store and Android Play store, cannot be downloaded officially as of now.
A Delhi based content creator, Pallavi Arora, who made videos for fun and has over 20,000 followers on TikTok, found this ban a bit harsh and an effort to curb her freedom of expression. She highlighted the fact that TikTok as a platform, was a source of income to a lot of people. The company itself offered a lot of freebies as a part of different contests while brands collaborated with creators with huge following to create sponsored videos. Though the payment often paltry compared to the followers they had, and the amount of efforts being put in by the creators.
“It took hardly a few seconds to create a basic video and just around 15 minutes for a nice shareworthy original video.” she claimed. But off late she found a lot of inappropriate content and comments on TikTok. While comments were easy to deal with, objectionable videos uploaded by other users weren’t removed easily.
Her statement summarises the problems that these platforms have, lack of proper moderation and stricter age verification process. Though in no way can these platforms escape their responsibility around the type of content shared. Even Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have faced a tough time in India when it came to videos and images spreading hate speech and inappropriate content. Such bans can be considered a step towards limiting freedom of speech and may lead to a controlled internet.
Indian government also needs to ensure that there is a proper policy in place so that such bans do not become a standard operating procedure limiting the internet freedom of billions. There are still quite a lot of original content creators who invest a lot of time and efforts in creating quality content. For these creators such a ban can prove disastrous. As far as TikTok is concerned, it has proved that there is a lot of scope and space for such apps, it can easily be considered a missed opportunity. Hopefully, this incident helps TikTok to come out clean, ensures healthy content and gets proper moderation policies in place.