New Delhi: According to reports, the Central Government and at least five state governments are mulling over a complete ban on short-video platform TikTok and social media portal Helo, both owned by Chinese tech major Bytedance.
According to sources, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Gujarat are planning to ban the apps. The governments of Punjab and Karnataka are likely to follow suit.
Senior officials in the information technology (IT) ministry said that officials from Maharashtra, Gujarat, as well as Telangana, had “informally” got in touch with them to understand various ways to either curtail the usage of TikTok or ban it.
According to sources, these states are alarmed by the rising use of the app in smaller towns and hinterland, where it is increasingly being used for spreading hate messages and child pornography. While the company has said that it is monitoring the app to prevent such incidents and cooperating with the authorities, the state governments believe banning TikTok is a better idea in the absence of solid regulations.
“We are being approached by various state governments which fear that TikTok is promoting child pornography, as well as hate speech. There have been such incidents, and even after the company took down some of these videos, the app still has a lot of objectionable videos floating around. State governments are planning to ban it completely,” said a senior IT ministry official.
IT cells of various state governments are daily coming across various videos which they believe are highly objectionable.
“We came across a video on TikTok which shows a toddler touching his private parts and a woman laughing. We have tried working with the teams of these social media firms but such incidents continue. We strongly believe banning TikTok and similar apps is the only solution,” said a senior official of the IT Cell for the government of Telangana state.
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Ms Kalinga