The interim ban on the Chinese social media app TikTok is costing the company, ByteDance a loss of $500,000 every day. The company states that not only are they bleeding money but also putting over 250 jobs and over two million subscriber’s safety features at risk too.
TikTok has been banned in India from being downloaded through the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. The Supreme Court is hearing in connection with the TikTok App prohibition case was handed over to the Madras High Court which is directed to decide on April 24.
Earlier the Madras High Court (HC) on a plea filed by advocate and social activist Muthu Kumar on 1 April 2019 had held that TikTok is banned in India for its pornographic content and its potential of exposing children to sexual predators.
On Monday, a bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna and Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said that Chinese company ByteDance, which owns TikTok app, can raise its grievances before the High Court on April 24, when the matter is listed. The bench said that the High Court has to decide the plea for interim relief of vacating the ban order on April 24 and if it does not decide the appeal, then the ban order would stand vacated.
The company had earlier told the top court that there were over billion downloads of the mobile app and the high court passed ex-parte orders. The app allows users to create short videos and then share them. It had asked the government if it would enact a statute on the line of the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Last week, Google and Apple blocked TikTok in India, thus preventing users from downloading the app from Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The high court’s interim order came on public interest litigation (PIL) that alleged the app encouraged pedophiles and the content “degraded culture and encouraged pornography.”