Central Government Seeks Detailed Response from TikTok Over Unlawful Content

The Minister of State for Home Affairs, G Kishan Reddy has responded to certain unstarred questions by Rajya Sabha member, Vijay Goel. According to Reddy, TikTok is an ‘intermediary as per the Information Technology Act of 2000. He further said that there have been certain reports about use of TikTok for the circulation of ‘unlawful content’ and that the government has sought detailed clarification from TikTok.

Here is the complete statement from G Kishan Reddy:

Police and Public Order are State subjects as per the Constitution of India. The responsibility to maintain law and order, protection of life and property of citizens etc. rests primarily with the respective State/Union Territory Government. The State/UT Governments are competent to deal with such offences including cyber crime offences under the extant provisions of law.

TikTok app in an intermediary as per the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. The IT Act has provisions for removal of unlawful online content. Section 79 of the IT Act and the Information Technology (Information Guidelines) Rules 2011 require that the intermediaries shall observe due diligence while discharging their duties and shall inform the users of computer resources not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, harassing, defamatory, libellous, invasion of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, or otherwise unlawful in any manner. Intermediaries are also expected to remove any unlawful content as and when brought by an appropriate government or its agency.

There have been some reports about use of TikTok application for circulation of unlawful content. The government has sought detailed clarification from TikTok.

Recently it was reported that ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok said it was planning to set up a data centre in India. "As a testimony to ByteDance's recognition of India's efforts to frame a new data protection legislation, we are taking a significant step towards establishing a data centre in India," said the startup, which also owns the social media platform Helo. "We are now in the process of examining options for safe, secure and reliable services for our Indian users within Indian borders," it said.