India’s TikTok Ban Closes Off Path to Stardom
Young men and women from the countryside discovered the joys of creativity, individuality and even celebrity on the Chinese app.
Goofy dance or intellectual property?
Photographer: Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images
I was not one of the more than 200 million Indians on TikTok. I did download the app once but it was, even by the standards of social media, overwhelming: a sort of cascade of practically unsorted, apparently random short videos — the motivation for most of which was clearly beyond my poor and perhaps superannuated understanding.
So it is not as a TikTok addict that I responded with some dismay to the Indian government’s decision this week to “ban” it alongside 50-plus other “Chinese” apps. I’m disappointed because the move seems both pointless and arbitrary.