India Ban Hits TikTok Where It Hurts

TikTok, the popular video sharing app formally known as musical.ly, is no longer available in Google’s and Apple’s app stores in India after the federal government complied with a state court’s request to ban the app for allegedly encouraging pornography and possible facilitating child abuse. The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology requested both Apple and Google to take down the app, which both companies promptly did.

ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, had already appealed against the court order before it was carried out on Tuesday. In its petition to India’s Supreme Court, the company argued that it couldn’t be held accountable for the actions of third parties on the platform and that it was being unfairly singled out among social media platforms.

As the following chart shows, the ban hits ByteDance right where it hurts. According to app analytics firm Priori Data, India was the app’s largest market in the first quarter of 2019 with more than 40 million downloads on Android and iOS combined. In 2018, TikTok saw nearly 120 million downloads in the country, compared to just 23 million in the United States.