By Debdutta Ghosh
The Chinese video posting app TikTok was arguably the second most downloaded social media app in India in 2019 and its obsession with Indian users – especially the youth, is no secret.
But while the number of users of the app continues to rise in the country, so does the number of crimes related to it.
Over the entire of 2019 there have been multiple instances when wanted criminals have used the app to post threatening videos while hate speech was also circulated rampantly.
In 2019, India recorded the largest number of requests to the owners of TikTok – the China-based ByteDance, to take down objectionable videos posted on the platform. The highest number of requests for sharing of user information was also made from India, according to the frist transparency report issued by the company.
The report noted 107 of the under information and content removal requests were made by the Indian government in the first half of 2019 alone. That comprised of 99 requests that were a result of court directions whereas 8 were emergency requests. These requests comprised of 143 accounts on the platform.
In terms of such requests, the United States followed India with 85 requests in the first half 2019.
To put things into context, more than 5.5 billion hours in total were spent by Indians in 2019 according to an analysis by the data analytics firm App Annie. That eclipsed the time spent the year before. And by December of 2019, there was 90 per cent growth in the number of monthly active users of the app in India at 81 million. In fact the December number monthly active users in India of the app were higher than the combined total of the 11 countries.
And in 2019, TikTok was repeatedly linked to crimes and criminals in incidents spanning the country.
28 year old Venkataraman was already in being searched by the police in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for publishing an abusive video of TikTok of 56 seconds in February of 2019. In the video, which went viral within just a day, Venkataraman had spewed venom against ‘dalits’ sying: “Fight us if you are a real man, you Dalit dogs. You bastards are worthless in front of us. We’ll butcher you lowlifes.” He later walked into the local police station confessing that he had committed a murder soon after the video went viral. He had killed his friend who had urged him to do the video.
The in April last year, 19-year-old Salman Zakir was reportedly accidentally killed by a stray bullet from an illegal gun which was being held by his friend Sohail Malik. Zakir and Malik, along with another of their friends were out late at night on the streets of Delhi driving a luxury car. The accused later told police that they were trying to make TikTok videos with the illegal gun when it accidently went off. However police refused to believe that it was an accident. Sohail was reported to be very active on TikTok.
Back in October of 2019, Uttar Pradesh police cornered a known fugitive named Ashwini Kumar. He was however better known as ‘Johnny Dada’ and was quite famous on TikTok where he portrayed himself as a “villain”. Cornered by the police, he shot himself, ending his fame on the social media app. Police later recovered a from him that detailed how he had conducted three murders.
In May last year, 27-year old Mohit Mor, a resident of Najafgarh in South Delhi and a TikTok star with over 500,000 followers and 5.9 million “hearts”, was shot dead in broad daylight by miscreants while – guess what – he was shooting a video for TikTok. While shooting down Mor, the assailants were reported to have said: “Let us make you a TikTok star.”
The latest of the incidents was reported from Jaipur in Rajasthan in February this year wherein a teenager was beaten up and paraded naked through a neighborhood. His crime – he had made a TikTok video with a girl. The video allegedly tried to show a romantic relationship between the two. It was seen by the girl’s family who let hell loose on the boy.
These are but some of the more well known incidents that became headlines of news channels and made it to first pages of news papers. Reports by organizations have suggested hundreds, perhaps thousands more incidents where TikTok has taken center stage.
After a temporary ban on the app last year by Madras High Court, the app is back in India after a fried hiatus. And if user numbers of 2019 is anything to go by, TikTok is set to become more popular.
But will crimes related to the app follow a similar path? – only time will reveal
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