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.”
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.
