Latest on TikTok Ban: Complete Supreme Court Order & Bytedance Statement in Its Defence

After almost a week since the popular video platform TikTok got banned by the Madras High Court. There is an update to it. Today i.e. on 22 April 2019 there was another hearing at the Supreme Court regarding the ban of the app in India. 

Earlier the court directed the government to issue a temporary ban on the app in the country. It led to Google and Apple to remove the app from their respective app stores.  

What did Supreme Court directed today? 

The Supreme Court has said that the Madras High Court should take a decision on the interim ban on April 24 failing to which the ban will be lifted. In other words, the app will be available for download on all app stores for Android and iOS.  

Bytedance statement in its defence: 

According to Bytedance, the ban order was passed by the Madras High Court without hearing them. The company also mentioned Section 2(w) of the IT Act that claims the mobile platform is an intermediary and it cannot be held liable for actions of third parties on the platform. It also pointed towards Section 79 of the IT Act which provides protection to intermediaries. 

The company said that TikTok only had 0.00006 per cent of objectionable content on its platform. It had also removed almost 60 million objectionable videos since July of last year under the platforms guidelines. Bytedance also maintained that app's terms and conditions only allow it to be used by children above the age of 13 years. 

Though, the interim ban has only resulted in preventing the distribution of the TikTok app by the official app stores on Android and iOS. Still, the app could be downloaded on Android from APK depositories from the Internet. 

Interestingly, the service is still operational and if you have the app pre-installed, you can continue to use it and also create or view content legally.