TikTok’s users in India are now flooding Twitter with their memes
TikTok could be the third most popular app in the world, have launched Lil Nas X‘s career, and created a direct line to its 500 million monthly active users globally for indie artists, but it’s currently losing out on some fire content thanks to its latest country ban.
The Beijing-based video app is currently banned in India. On April 16 the app was disabled by Apple and Google from their App Store and Play Store, respectively.
The ban was a culmination of a few issues and incidents for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Justices N Kirubakaran and SS Sundar of the Madras High Court. The Ministry and Court were made aware of an increase in abusive or pornographic content on the platform, felt that addiction among young students to the app was becoming an issue, and in Delhi, the app was associated with the death of a 19-year-old.
However, in the same way that no one could stop ‘Old Town Road’ from becoming a viral parody challenge, TikTok users in India have felt the need to have their videos seen and heard.
“The rise of TikTok (formerly Musical.ly), highlights where the future of the Internet in India is: video,” leading tech policy and media consultant Prasanto K. Roy told IANS.
“Of the 500 million smartphone and mobile broadband users in India, well over 300 million consume predominantly or only video. And as we get the next 200 million online by 2020, the video-only share will rise to over 70 per cent,” he added.
Since the ban, Twitter has been flooded with memes and videos usually reserved for TikTok. Clips like dialogues from movies like ‘Kalank‘ and ‘Bajirao Mastani’, to clips pulled directly from the app, are all being pushed on users Twitter timelines.
Trust Me Or Not But This guy is The Only Reason Behind TikTok’s Ban…
RT If You Feeling Sad for Him#TikTok#TikTokban pic.twitter.com/IfbRbHpmxU— Engineer_हूँ (@black_snake10) April 17, 2019
Tiktok banned Because of this video ? #TikTokban pic.twitter.com/i2BBqRUMgC
— Arham Sayyed ?? (@Tweet2Arham) April 17, 2019
Reaction of every Tik Tok user #TikTokban pic.twitter.com/UrfcCxjkJj
— Pankaj jatrara ?? (@JatraraPankaj) April 16, 2019
#TikTok was really a #Kalank
for the society .#Thanos and #SpiderMan after #TikTokban in India: pic.twitter.com/BsTBaHF6VP— DexPool (@Dexter2226) April 17, 2019
2 minutes of Silence for the tiktok users who mentioned Actors in their Bio #TikTokban pic.twitter.com/XS9ILwfuUq
— Shiva mani (@shivaa_mani) April 16, 2019
Tiktok users to govt #TikTokban pic.twitter.com/HIYJ7OCDnp
— Thanos (@Woh_ladka) April 16, 2019
Another hearing of the case between Madras Supreme Court and TikTok is scheduled for April 22. For now though, no new users can download the app in India and we can expect more hilarious video memes on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.
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