TikTok, a popular mobile phone application that allows users to shoot and share 15-second videos with lip-sync set to popular film songs and dialogues among others, is being seen as a “cultural” and “law and order” threat by a section of politicians in Tamil Nadu.
The fact that a large number of youngsters are hooked to the app prompted Information Technology Minister M. Manikandan to announce in the Assembly that he would get the Chinese-developed app banned. PMK leader S. Ramadoss sought a ban on it last month, claiming that many users were uploading “suggestive sexual dance choreography.”
On Tuesday, Manithaneya Jananayaga Katchi MLA M. Thamimun Ansari (Nagapattinam) raised the issue saying people, regardless of age groups, were getting “addicted” to the application.
Mr. Manikandan said the government had been receiving reports in this regard. Just as it did in the case of the ‘Blue Whale’, a game being operated through social media platforms, it would recommend to the Centre to get the application banned.
While BJP state president Tamilisai Soundararajan welcomed the ban proposal, DMK spokesperson Manushyaputran said the government could not sit in judgment over what defined obscenity. Proposing a ban would amount to cultural policing, he said.
