Last week Indian authorities reported that at least 20 of their soldiers were killed in a confrontation with Chinese troops on the border of the Kashmir region. Yesterday, awarding national security issues, the Indian government banned 59 applications of Chinese origin, including TikTok.
New Delhi said the nation’s Computer Emergency Response Team had received many “representations from citizens regarding data security and privacy violation affecting public order issues. (…) The compilation of this data, its extraction and profiling by elements hostile to the national security and defense of India.”
Neither TikTok nor the other apps are more available in Apple and Google stores for download. In the case of the video app there are reports that TikTok voluntarily withdrew from the stores.
This is a huge problem for the short video app because India represents its second largest market, it had 200 million users in that country.
TikTok, which has amassed more than 200 million users in India, identifies Asia’s third-largest economy as its largest foreign market. Nikhil Gandhi, who oversees TikTok’s operations in India, said the firm was “in the process” of complying with India’s order and hoped to engage with the nation’s lawmakers to allay their concerns.
Other apps that have been banned include Tencent’s WeChat, which has been downloaded more than 100 million times on Google’s Android, Alibaba’s UC browser and two of Xiaomi’s apps.
India has approximately 3 billion Internet users and this is the first time the Indian government has vetoed so many applications at the same time.
