Suspicion. The TikTok platform, which was one of 59 Chinese apps banned a day earlier by New Delhi in the name of India's national security, defended itself on Tuesday for communicating Indian user data to the Chinese government.
“TikTok continues to respect data security and privacy under Indian law and has not shared any information about our users in India with any foreign government, including the Chinese government,” TikTok's Indian subsidiary, owned by Chinese group ByteDance, said in a press release. .
The ban is a major setback for TikTok, which is hugely popular among young Indians, who make up the bulk of its global users. The app allows you to publish videos several tens of seconds long in which users film themselves performing sketches, singing in playback, or dancing to music in the background.
Military tensions between India and China
India announced late Monday that it would ban around sixty Chinese apps to “ensure India's cyber security and sovereignty.” The decision comes two weeks after an extremely rare deadly clash between Indian and Chinese troops over a border dispute in the Himalayas.
The clash left 20 dead on the Indian side, and an unknown number of casualties on the Chinese side. The death of the Indian soldier sparked a wave of anger in India, prompting calls for a boycott of Chinese companies.
“TikTok has democratized the internet by being accessible in 14 Indian languages, with hundreds of millions of users, artists, storytellers, educators and artists depending on it to earn a living, many of them first-time internet users,” the app lamented in a press release.
Among the apps banned by New Delhi are also WeChat, Weibo and the game Clash of Kings.
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