CHENNAI: Amid the growing concern over the spread of the coronavirus in the country and the bleak outlook for businesses and livelihoods during the ever-extending lockdown, some of us have had bigger fish to fry — calling for a ban (more of a boycott) on Chinese products. Even as our WhatsApp savvy population were trying to kickstart a modern-day non-cooperation movement (for reasons they seemed to not be entirely sure of), the Indian government stepped in to make things easier for them — banning as many as 59 Chinese apps in the country.
While the WhatsApp army had reason to cheer, ardent fans of some of these apps find themselves with mixed feelings. The loss of SHEIN may not be something I can ever recover from (you would feel the same if you had been beneficiaries of their summer dresses and lingerie), but it’s having to bid zái jián (goodbye in Chinese) to TikTok that has had many an Indian in mourning. We the people were introduced to the world of lip sync and video sharing with Musical. ly. When China’s ByteDance merged with the company to offer the world its hybrid baby — TikTok — our obsession only grew.
The data for 2019 pegs the number of active monthly users at 81 million and hours spent on the app at over 5.5 million. Removing a major source of entertainment for such a wide target audience cannot be without some disappointment and a few broken hearts, it seems.
Grateful users
Thoufiq Mohamed says the ban came as a “rude shock”. Tik- Tok has been an important part of the past three years of his life. “It got all the more special when my grandmother A Rajamani joined me in my videos last year (remember the never-ending lip-sync compilations this duo churned out over the past few months?). TikTok gave us a platform to showcase our talent. It brought us fame and even some film opportunities. We will forever be grateful,” he recounts.
Thoufiq had 12 lakh followers for his account. That is not something you walk away from unscathed. For Pragathi Joy, it was mild interest in content curation that got her trying out one app after another. It began with a lot of hesitation and few videos on Dubsmash in 2014, she narrates.
“People began noticing my videos and appreciating my content. My renditions and recreation of Vadivelu dialogues and comedy tracks garnered a lot of attention. Eventually, I moved to Musical.ly and then TikTok, and continued churning more videos. Several videos went viral and garnered a million- odd views too! Around 2017, I’d stopped sharing content regularly because a lot of people followed suit and it didn’t feel unique anymore. However, my followers and well-wishers suggested I don’t stop sharing content.
So, I resumed it. I am currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Dentistry and have been at home because of the lockdown. So, it gave me ample time to dole out new videos. In the past three months, my follower count spiked to about 100K,” she says. Despite all it had to offer, Pragathi seems to have made peace with the ban; but it has not been as easy for the likes of SN Parthasarathy. He and his grandmother Chellam had done much to entertain the masses with their recreation of songs and movie scenes. “When the ban was announced, I wasn’t sure how to react.
But, as a gesture to thank all our followers (1.2 million of them), my grandmother and I went live on the app on Tuesday. It was quite emotional for me as over one lakh followers joined us to share their love and appreciation. As a creator, this is all I could ask and I am happy to have contributed to making people across the globe feel positive at some point. We feel grateful, knowing that our ‘combo’ will be remembered by everyone,” he shares.
‘App’spirations
While the pursuit of entertainment and need for a hobby had been the reason behind most people getting onboard this platform, it was big career aspirations that drew Akshay Kamal and Vishnu Unnikrishnan here. For them, it’s not just loss of a happening app but a career-defining tool. “Tik- Tok provided me with the platform to fulfil my dreams and was my ticket to entering the media field. I used the app to tap into my acting skills and keep my creative juices flowing while at a civil engineering job.
Before TikTok, I used to recreate scenes by playing the audio clips of popular movie scenes, acting and editing it. I used to put them up on Instagram but it only received a lukewarm response. But when TikTok came into the scene, it helped take my videos to people across the globe. Videos as short as 15 seconds used to receive two million views and several likes within hours. One of those videos helped me land a meaty acting role in a popular soap, Raja Rani, in Vijay TV. From there, I went on to act in another soap, Rettai Roja, in Zee Tamil. I’ve just finished shooting for a film and awaiting its release. I’d definitely attribute my success to the fame and exposure I got on TikTok,” Akshay explains. Vishnu has a similar origin story. His videos, on average, received two-nine million views on the app.
He began getting offers to act in short films and music videos. “In 2018, I bagged a role in Vijay TV’s prime time serial — Saravanan Meenatchi. Now, I play the lead in Zee Tamil’s Kandukonden Kandukonden,” he stays. Despite the ban, both men are optimistic but for different reasons. “I have now garnered a certain following for the work I do, and have chalked out other ways to keep my follower-engagement intact. This includes starting a YouTube Channel. But for those who are just starting out, they now have one platform less to beam their talent. TikTok representatives are in talks with officials concerned about the ban.
This might not be permanent and we might find a solution to bring it back — perhaps by setting up a local server to avoid potential security threats. We’ll have to wait and watch,” suggests Vishnu. Akshay, on the other hand, has his money on local alternatives to fuel the dreams of future aspirants. “I am quite confident we will be developing a homegrown app. In fact, I have already started receiving requests from a few people, who are currently developing apps that will allow people to make such entertaining short-form videos, to promote it after its launch. Indian app use panna namakkum oru gethu dhane,” he offers.
Under the scanner
Amid such outpouring of grief, there is some relief coming in from certain quarters too. Actor Haripriya Ramesh is glad to have the app gone just so it could get people to stop insulting/ humiliating those using the platform. While criticism towards those using the platform to perpetuate vile and abusive ideas may be welldeserved, generalising such criticism with obscene remarks affects people of talent who share the app space, she says.
Akshyaa, a video jockey with the Sun TV Network who started using the platform to kill time between shoots, says she will certainly not miss the graphic content that was becoming more and more common on the app. “There was ‘stupid’ content that gained millions of views and likes. Young or old, people at home have picked up the ‘glamour’ tool just to gain likes and shares,” she opines. Pragathi, on her part, raises concerns about a different kind of content. “While the reasons for the ban are socio-political, I felt the app should have come under scrutiny much ahead — when people started using it to share absurd and vile content that required viewer discretion,” she remarks.
She isn’t the only one with such an opinion. TikTok has, over the years, received quite some criticism for content that ranged from misogynistic and sexist to abusive and pornographic. It has been called out for not being able to moderate its content or the comments — often predatory — on the content shared, even by girls as young as nine years old. In December 2019, the Madras High Court even imposed a temporary ban on the app for allegedly promoting child pornography. In March 2020, TikTok pledged to work with WeProtect Global Alliance (a global alliance led by the UK government to stop online child sexual abuse and exploitation).
Before we could see the results of this labour, it came under fire in India when user Faizal Siddiqui put out a video promoting acid attack. The call to ban the app increased, with additional voice from the National Commission for Women. Yet, when the ban eventually came, it was in response to data threat and security. Talking about the problem that has gone unaddressed, gender rights activist and scholar Archanaa Sekar says it would not have made much of a difference had the ban been to fix the content generated on the app. “A platform isn’t going to stop people putting out or producing abusive content. If there is no TikTok, that content is going to come on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whichever other app is available. If we are beginning to have a conversation around abusive content, we have to pull up all of these apps and have a larger conversation about who is moderating the content we see.
Making the ban on TikTok revolve around abusive content seems like selective outrage,” she suggests. Despite its many problems, TikTok offered democracy of content and user-engagement where anyone can be seen and heard and this is what we are losing out on when we make our action specific to a few apps. “TikTok seems to be able to give everybody a voice and tap into everybody’s creative potential. In comparison, another platform like Instagram is bought into by a different demographic. It not just revolves around people’s experience and they trying to have fun but sort of branding themselves and selling their brand. On the other hand, a lot of TikTok celebrities are middle-aged.
What a platform like that means to put people out there in a very non-judgemental context, what it means for people to engage with the outside as themselves is important. In that sense, it seems like an elitist argument to make of TikTok for generating abusive content because all apps generate abusive content,” she explains. While such conversations that venture into the arena of accountability and community standards still seem out of reach, the common user may content himself with just finding an alternative app for their entertainment needs. Perhaps, this may be the time for Share- Chat to come into vogue. You never know.
(With inputs from Naaz Ghani, Roshne Balasubramanian and Vaishali Vijaykumar)