#BanTikTok Solves Nothing

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle.Earlier this month, there was a huge push on Twitter to #BanTikTok. While Twitter is always enraged about most things, there are few apps in India that divide opinion more than TikTok. Earlier last year, Madras High Court placed a ban on the app, only to lift it later.Let us go a level deeper than the Twitter outrage and look at the reasons behind the call to ban the app. When the Madras High Court gave the order to ban TikTok, there was a clear implicit rationale that can broadly be divided into three main points. Firstly, TikTok has problems with content. Media coverage in India and abroad have noted the presence of pornography on the platform. Besides, the platform is a very graphic medium to spread hate speech. WIRED has done some excellent reporting on this and finds that the app has been used as a channel to incite violence between castes, at times leading to murder.