MADURAI: After much drama, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Wednesday lifted the ban it had imposed on the download of Chinese mobile application Tik Tok. A division bench comprising Justices N Kirubakaran and S S Sundar passed the order after the company filed a counter-affidavit.
In its counter petition, the company said it had implemented solutions of industry-standard to address problems of pornography and illegal behaviour. “The community guidelines educate users not to post, share or promote any obscene, harmful or misleading content,” it said. “The guidelines are available in several languages, including Tamil.”
“We also have the ‘report content’ feature for users to report any objectionable content,” the company said, adding that such reported content would be taken down within 15 minutes, on an average. “The complaints would be handled by a grievance officer appointed as per Information and Technology Act.”
The company also submitted that it has two types of mechanisms — Artificial Intelligence (AI) and human moderation —to filter out violent and obscene content. Recording these submissions, the bench lifted the ban. However, the Judges warned that if any objectionable content is found in the application in future, contempt proceedings may be initiated.
How the app plans to ensure safety
More than six million videos, which had content violating safety policies, have already been removed from the platform. A team trained in content moderation, with proficiency in 16 Indian languages, would be monitoring all content shared on the platform, the company’s counsel has assured