For a while now, the TikTok app has enabled the common or garden variety of internet user to make funny, silly, absurd, even atrocious videos and share them with anyone with the inclination to watch them. The app has assumed more sinister connotations in recent times. A citizen-led PIL (public interest litigation) in Madras High Court ordered the ban of the app because apparently, it facilitates the spread of porn and child sexual abuse. As of 17 April 2019, the app is already unavailable on Google Play or the iTunes app store.
You may be amused by that or you may find it awful and in poor taste. TikTok allows people to do this sort of thing. The lonely housewife may jig to a Bollywood number, young users show off, demonstrate their histrionic ability etc. etc.
Last year Indonesia banned the app citing blasphemy and pornography concerns. The app was reinstated after removing objectionable content and putting security mechanisms and age restrictions in place. In India, the SC sent the matter back to Madras HC who in turn refused to vacate the ban.
Apart from the execrable content that users create and foist upon us, serious charges are levelled against TikTok: those of encouraging porn and enabling sexual predators to prey on children.
Some wits shared this video, claiming that it is such abominable content that perhaps led the courts to decide what they did. Meanwhile, Apple and Google have gone ahead and blocked the app in compliance with the court directive.
One young man allegedly committed suicide after being harassed with TikTok videos others had made of him. One youth allegedly died by when he accidentally shot himself making a TikTok video. Another person died and two were injured while making a video when a motorcycle crashed into a truck.
Many thought it was a relief the silly app was banned. However, those who find TikTok amusing, engaging and a way to demonstrate their originality and sense of humour, are dismayed that the app is no longer available.
Bullying, the targeting of kids and child pornography are of course extremely serious concerns that we are all worried about. But how does banning one app address this issue? The internet has literally a million other ways for sexual predators and bullies to target their innocent victims.
While TikTok claims that it removed six million videos for not complying with its community guidelines these and other potentially problematic videos are out there still. Banning the app seems to be an exercise in futility in view of this.
TikTok is a miniscule part of the problem of child porn, harassment, bullying and so on. Its ban is a meaningless Band-Aid solution. Not long ago, people were getting into accidents doing the Kiki Challenge but would it have helped to have banned Drake's songs? People would have found other ways to be stupid.
While many of us – including me – would be happy never to see another TikTok video again, banning the app is no solution. For one it doesn’t cure stupidity or bad behaviour; no matter what Tamil Nadu's IT minister, M. Manikandan says: “young girls and everybody is behaving very badly”. Certainly they 'is' behaving badly, but not merely because of TikTok!
The only real solution is educating kids and users about possible dangers and encouraging responsible use while introducing in-app safeguards. Meanwhile, people in the IT industry are concerned that this sets a bad precedent. In fact, this is tantamount to censorship and the government acting as nanny to citizens yet again. This should concern all of us.
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