Viral social network, TicTok has suffered significant loss in its user ratings on the Google Play Store after aggrieved Indians stormed the play store to give the app a poor 1.2-star rating, OYOGist.com has gathered.
On Tuesday 19th of May 2020, #tiktokexposed began to trend on Twitter until the following day after several creators began to make series of complaints concerning the nature of the content the platform allows.
The consequence of this is how TikTok was downgraded from 4.8 stars to 1.2 stars on Google Play Store.
See what went down.
Aside from the concerns many Western policy-makers have expressed over the fact that Tiktok is owned by a Chinese company that must oblige to the Communist country’s laws on sharing its data with the government, in India violence-based content thrive on the app.
The latter, which is what prompted the viral hashtag #tiktokexposed and led to the downgrade in its Google Play Store ratings is the fact that Indians feel the app censors content posted by “poor people” and also allows the promotion of gender-based violent content in India.
This issue is reportedly pronounced with TikTok_In, the Indian version of the site.
One TikTok video that was reposted on Twitter by user Nishabh Jat showed one of Indian’s most popular TikTok users, Faizal Siddiqui, who reportedly has more than half a million followers on the app, promoting bathing women with acid.
Faizal Siddiwui was banned from the app, but that was not before the outrage went viral.
With this poking already aggrieved Indians, where gender-based violence and rape of women rank high, TikTok also allegedly censors content from “poor-looking” Indians.
A Statistic shows that in India, 70% of women are victims of domestic violence. 38% of Indian men admit they have physically abused their partners.
This inevitably ranks India as the most dangerous country to live for women, according to a Thomson Reuters report.
#Tiktokexposed has pushed for a ban of the app in India, with some users blaming the app for causing violence and attributing its use by youths to wasting their time doing unproductive activities on the app.
While the Faizal Siddiqui acid attack incidence was reported to Indian authorities and Tiktok, Indians took it upon themselves to “deal with Tiktok” for allowing such content in the first place.
This is how many Indians decided to give Tiktok a negative 1 star review, making it one of the apps with the poorest ratings on the Play Store. It’s worth noting that Snapchat once suffered a similar fate in 2017.
Before then, Tiktok used to have a glimmering 4.8 star rating.
News outlet reports have shown that Faizal Siddiqui has been banned after an official complaint by the chairperson of India’s National Commission for Women calling for the ban of the app in the country.
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