In India, a rustic of 1.4 billion people, it took TikTok just a couple of years to amass 200 million users. India was its biggest market. Then on June 29, 2020, the Indian government banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps after simmering conflict between India and China escalated into violence on their border.
A preferred type of entertainment that was not the subject of political debate disappeared overnight. Now, as politicians wrangle in Washington over a plan that might shut down access to 170 million Americans who use TikTok, India’s example offers a taste of what may come – and the way audiences and other social media corporations that serve them might respond .
TikTok, owned by ByteDance in Beijing, arrived in India early, establishing a broad base in 2017 in dozens of the country’s languages. Its content – short videos – tended to be homegrown and hyperlocal. An limitless scroll of home-made productions, many filmed in small towns or farms and set to popular music, have helped you pass the time on the world’s most cost-effective and fastest-growing mobile data network. As in the United States, TikTok has grow to be a platform for entrepreneurial extroverts to construct corporations.
Veer Sharma was 26 years old when the music stopped. He amassed seven million followers on TikTok, where he posted videos of him and his friends lip-syncing and joking to Hindi film songs. He was the son of a dismissed miller from Indore in central India and had barely accomplished formal education. His achievements on TikTok made him proud. He felt “extremely happy” when people recognized him on the street.
They were comfortable to see him too. As Mr. Sharma said, “an elderly couple met me and said they would watch my show before going to bed for laughs.” They told him that his “show was a way to break away from the hardships of everyday life.”
Thanks to his latest fame, Mr. Sharma was earning 100,000 rupees, or about $1,200, a month. He bought a Mercedes. After the ban in 2020, he barely had time to record one last video for his fans. “Our time together will soon be over and I don’t know how or when we will be able to meet again,” he told them.
“Then I cried and cried,” he said.
But short videos, lots of them saved from TikTok and uploaded to other sites that will not be banned, proceed to draw Indians.
Online life in India soon adapted to TikTok’s absence. Instagram Meta stepped in with its Reels and Alphabet-owned YouTube Shorts, TikTok-like products, and won over many influencers and eyeballs that had remained idle.
The services were highly regarded. However, experts say that something was lost along the way. Much of TikTok’s homespun Indian charm never found a brand new home. It was becoming increasingly difficult for small creators to be discovered.
Nikhil Pahwa, a digital policy analyst in New Delhi, traces an overall shift away from TikTok’s “algorithms and special sauce,” which were “much more tailored to Indian content” than the formulas utilized by the US giants that replaced it.
Several Indian corporations have tried to fill the gap brought on by the disappearance of Chinese competition. But US tech giants, with deeper pockets and a growing global audience, have dominated India. The country is currently the largest market for each corporations Youtube (almost 500 million monthly users) i Instagram (362 million), with about twice as many users as any of those corporations in the United States, although they earn much less per consumer.
India’s decision to chop off its population from TikTok was as sudden as the U.S. effort that began in 2020 has been happening. But the motivation was similar – and much more dramatic. While the United States and China are fighting a brand new form of Cold War for economic supremacy, soldiers have stood on the border in India and China since 1962. In 2020, this frozen conflict became heated. During one night of brutal hand-to-hand fighting, 20 Indian soldiers and at the least 4 Chinese were killed, a proven fact that China has never officially confirmed.
Two weeks later, India shut down TikTok. The app disappeared from the Google and Apple stores, and its website was blocked. By then, India had practice of blocking unwanted web sites and even turning off mobile data across entire regions in the name of maintaining law and order.
There were few other signs of retaliation from India, but this one motion caught public attention. According to Pahwa, the list of Chinese apps banned in India continues to grow and currently stands at 509.
Until then, the Indian web was an open market for China. Unlike domestic media corporations in India, tech startups have been free to simply accept investment from China and other countries. TikTok was only the hottest of dozens of Chinese-owned games and services distributed online to Indians.
Since at the least 2017, following an identical border skirmish, there was word circulating in national security circles that Chinese consumer technology could pose a threat to India’s sovereignty.
Indian officials have expressed concern that Chinese-owned apps could provide Beijing with a robust messaging tool in India’s noisy media environment. Just two months before the ban, India announced latest restrictions on investments from any country.”sharing a land border with India” Technically, this would include Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan. However, it was concluded that the real target was China.
On June 29, 2020, the official order that blocked TikTok and dozens of lesser-known Chinese websites did not explicitly mention China or the bloody fight on the border. Instead, the measure was described as a matter of “data security and privacy protection” of Indian citizens from “elements hostile to the national security and defense of India”.
In the following years, the Indian government used the rationale of maintaining the “security and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace” to dictate terms even to US technology companies. He has reported complaints to Apple and Twitter, as well as Meta and Google, sometimes to prevent comments critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
But the government held no grudge against TikTok influencers. After the ban got here into force, The BJP has contacted Mr. Sharma, who said he was depressed. Between the lack of income and fame, he felt his “world was falling apart.” He has already been contacted by Bengaluru-based TikTok rival Moj. Mr. Sharma’s career and income received a boost when he posted a clip of his state’s chief minister and started filming it promotional videos with other BJP officials. Now he feels proud that he is helping to implement Modi’s political agenda.
Another TikTokker who was temporarily “heartbroken” by the ban was Ulhas Kamathe, a 44-year-old dad from Mumbai. He somehow achieved a moment of international fame by devouring plates of chicken and muttering “piece of chicken leg” with his mouth full, which immediately became a meme. After losing nearly seven million followers on TikTok overnight, he says he’s recovered — finding five million on YouTube, four million on Instagram and three million on Facebook.
“Over the last three years, I rebuilt myself, without any help,” he said.
