Should Government of India Ban Tik Tok?

Tik Tok- the Chinese social media platform where people can share short dancing, lip-sync and comedy videos, has been brewing a lot of controversy these days because of the negative impact it has on the society.

The hashtag #BanTikTok has been trending on twitter after certain intolerant and misleading Tik Tok videos starting making rounds on the internet. The platform has been utterly misused as videos ranging from animal brutality to religious intolerance have been surfacing.

One such controversial video posted by Faizal Siddiqui, which glorified acid attack on women, stirred up major controversy. The video has been deleted and Faizal Siddiqui’s account has been suspended from the platform. The graveness of the matter accelerated when the National Commission for Women, and called Siddiqui out for his bigoted and parochial video. The NCW wrote a letter to the Maharashtra Police and ordered them to take strict action against the person behind the video.

Since then, many people have been demanding that the Government bans the app. Paresh Rawal, took to twitter and tweeted, “BAN TIK TOK”. People have been leaving negative comments on that app, and have been giving it poor ratings. Tik Tok’s ratings have dropped down really low. In last four days the play store rating of app has fallen from 4 start to less than 2 stars.

This is not the first time the social media platform stirred up a controversy. A few days ago, an internet war intensified suddenly, where YouTube and Tik Tok influencers lashed out at each other over the lack of originality in terms of content.

The app has been home to many disturbing videos which glorify and even to some extent promote animal abuse, bigotry, religious intolerance, social unrest, violence and many more offenses. At the same time the app has helped creativity to pour out. Many TikTok users share important information on the platform. India has over 11 crores active Tik Tok users. Banning TikTok is completely call of the government, however, Is it wise to ban an app just because few people have shared hatred on it? We must not forget that hatred is posted on other social media plaforms -Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp- too.