What happened when India pulled the plug on TikTok

In India, a country of 1.4 billion people, it took TikTok just a few years to build an audience of 200 million users. India was the largest market. Subsequently, on June 29, 2020, the Indian government banned TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps, after a simmering conflict between India and China culminated in violence at their border.

A popular form of entertainment, about which there was no political debate, disappeared overnight. As politicians in Washington argue over a plan that could cut off access to the 170 million Americans who use TikTok, India’s example offers a taste of what’s to come — and how the public and other social media companies that target them , could respond to this.

TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, came to India early and established a broad base in dozens of the country’s languages ​​in 2017. Their content – ​​short videos – was often homely and hyper-local. An endless series of home-made productions, many recorded in small towns or farms and set to popular music, helped pass the hours on the cheapest and fastest growing mobile data network in the world. Similar to the United States, TikTok became a platform for enterprising extroverts to build businesses.

Veer Sharma was 26 when the music stopped. He had amassed seven million followers on TikTok, where he posted videos of himself and his friends lip-syncing and joking to Hindi film songs. The son of a laid-off factory worker from the central Indian city of Indore, he barely completed his formal education. His TikTok achievements filled him with pride. He felt ‘extremely happy’ when people recognized him on the street.

They were happy to see him too. Once, Mr. Sharma said, an “elderly couple met me and said they would watch my show for fun before going to bed.” They told him that his “show was an escape from the grind of their daily lives.”

With his newfound fame, Mr. Sharma earned 100,000 rupees, about $1,200, a month. He bought a Mercedes. After the ban in 2020, he barely had time to make one last video for his fans. “Our time together will end soon, 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.

Still, short videos, including many saved from TikTok and uploaded to other sites that aren’t banned, continue to draw Indians.

India’s online life quickly adapted to TikTok’s absence. Meta’s Instagram popped up with its Reels and Alphabet’s YouTube with Shorts, both TikTok-like products, and converted many of the influencers and eyeballs who had remained inactive.

The services were popular. But something was lost along the way, experts said. Much of the homey charm of Indian TikTok never found a new home. It became harder for small makers to be discovered.

Nikhil Pahwa, a digital policy analyst in New Delhi, tracks the general change in the departure of TikTok’s “algorithms, its special sauce,” which was “much more localized to Indian content” than the formulas used by the US giants that created it succeeded .

Several Indian companies tried to fill the gap left by the loss of Chinese competition. But the US tech giants, with their deeper pockets and growing global audience, came to dominate India. The country is now the largest market for both YouTube (nearly 500 million monthly users) and Instagram (362 million), with about twice as many users as either in the United States.

India’s decision to cut off its population from TikTok was as sudden as the US effort, which began in 2020, is protracted. But the motivation was similar – and even more dramatic. While the United States and China are engaged in a new kind of cold war over economic dominance, India and China have had troops stationed on their border since 1962. In 2020, that frozen conflict became hot. In one night of brutal hand-to-hand fighting, twenty Indian soldiers were killed, along with at least four Chinese, which China has never officially confirmed.

Two weeks later, India disabled TikTok. The app disappeared from the Google and Apple stores and the website was blocked. By then, India was well practiced at blocking offending websites and even cutting off mobile data across entire regions in the name of maintaining law and order.

There were few other signs of retaliation by India, but this one action caught the public’s attention. The list of Chinese apps that India has banned continues to grow, now at 509, Mr Pahwa said.

Until then, the Indian Internet had provided China with an open market. Unlike India’s domestic media companies, tech startups have been free to take investments from China and other countries. TikTok was only the most popular among the dozens of Chinese-owned games and services distributed to Indians online.

Since at least 2017, following a similar border skirmish, the possibility that Chinese consumer technology could pose a risk to Indian sovereignty has circulated in national security circles.

Indian officials had expressed concern that Chinese-owned apps could provide Beijing with a powerful messaging tool within the rough Indian media environment. Just two months before the ban, India announced new restrictions on investments from any country “share land border with India.” Technically, that would apply to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan. But China was seen as the real target.

On June 29, 2020, the official order blocking TikTok and dozens of lesser-known Chinese services did not explicitly mention China or the bloody battle at the border. Instead, the measure was described as a matter of “data security and protection of privacy” of Indian citizens against “elements hostile to the national security and defense of India.”

In subsequent years, the Indian government has used the rationale of maintaining the “security and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace” to impose conditions even on US technology companies. It has complained to Apple and Twitter, as well as Meta and Google, sometimes to avoid criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.

But the government held no grudge against TikTok’s influencers. After the ban came into effect, the BJP contacted Mr Sharma, who said he had become depressed. Between the loss of his income and his fame, he felt his “world collapsing.” He had already been contacted by Moj, a TikTok rival from Bangalore. Mr Sharma’s career and income rebounded after he posted and started making a video with his state’s chief minister promotional videos with other BJP office holders. He now takes pride in helping to advance Mr. Modi’s political agenda.

Another TikTokker who was temporarily “heartbroken” by the ban was Ulhas Kamathe, a 44-year-old father from Mumbai. He somehow achieved a moment of international fame by devouring chicken casseroles while muttering “piece of chicken leg” through his mouth, an instant meme. After losing his nearly seven million TikTok followers overnight, he says he’s bounced back — finding five million on YouTube, four million on Instagram and three million on Facebook.

“I spent the last three years rebuilding it all by myself without any help,” he said.