Chinese Micro-Video Sharing App TikTok Faces Flak in India - Report

New Delhi (Sputnik): The Karnataka State Commission for Women, a state-run woman's advocacy organisation in the Indian state of Karnataka, is targeting the mobile application TikTok, which has become very popular among young people. This was confirmed by Commission Chairperson Nagalakshmi Bai to the English daily Times of India. Recently, the Madras High Court mandated that the Indian government ban the highly addictive and ‘mentally deranging' mobile application. 

TikTok is a China-made app and has more than 54 million users in India.

Talking to The Times of India, Bai lamented that the Commission's initiative to ban the app had gone unheeded by the state government of Karnataka.

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"We wrote to the chief minister about this long ago but did not get any reply. So, we are now approaching the court as there have been numerous complaints of harassment/misrepresentation and pornographic content being circulated on the app," she said.

There have been many complaints of misuse of the app and its content on social media. The misuse was especially targeted against women. "There have been multiple complaints voiced by defamed women [targeted by people] uploading abusive content on social media. In some of the cases, we also found that former boyfriends had misused old photos or videos of women to portray them in a bad light," Bai added.

The media report described an incident where TikTok videos of a 20-year-old female student who had 130,000 followers were trolled and abused. The student had to deactivate her account.

TikTok clarified to TOI that the company had instituted robust measures to protect users and their privacy and had deployed a human moderation team for content flagging and its removal on a real-time basis. "We are committed to abiding by local laws and regulations, and in order to better coordinate with law enforcement agencies, we have already appointed a chief nodal officer based out of India," the company spokesperson told to the media.

The company has also instituted a Safety Centre for users in 10 major Indian languages.

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"TikTok recently launched its Safety Centre, a local website that consists of safety policies, tools and resources to equip users with product education and protection measures when using the app. The Safety Centre is available in 10 major Indian languages," the media report read, citing the company spokesperson.