India tops list in requesting TikTok for content restrictions, user info access

MUMBAI: India has topped the list in making the highest number of legal and emergency requests to takedown specific content and to access user information, TikTok said in its first-ever Transparency Report for the first half of 2019 (1 January 2019 to 30 June 2019).

A short-video sharing application in its report claimed that India made over 99 legal requests and eight emergency requests to TikTok, taking the total requests to 107. Followed by the United States of 79 requests, of which 68 are legal and eleven for emergency requests.

ByteDance owned TikTok in its report said that at least 47 per cent of India’s requests have been complied with by the platform, whereas it has obliged to 86 per cent of requests made by the United States.  

The chart of content restricts missed China’s name. “We did not receive any requests from countries other than those listed in the chart below,” the transparency report said.

TikTok, the China-based application touts over 1.3 billion installs worldwide, has recently been banned by the United States army amid security concerns. Similarly, the platform, which has gained popularity in India, has also come under scrutiny over objectionable content.

Meanwhile, TikTok it received over 3345 copyrighted content takedown notices from across the world, of which 85 per cent content was removed, the report said. “We honour valid take-down requests based on violations of copyright law, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).”

Like TikTok, the social media giant Facebook, along with search-engine giant Google have also been coming out with transparency report in a timely manner that specifies takedown requests.