On Monday (January 24), TikTok informed that it had paid social media influencers to promote specific videos on Twitter in Japan, without notifying the viewers about its sponsored nature.
As per reports, the Japanese office of TikTok had employed ‘stealth marketing’ and kept the audience in darkness about the curated paid content, which was pushed on Twitter by influencers in the country. Such a practice might have led to many social media users mistaking paid content for organic posts.
In its defence, the parent company ByteDance Ltd claimed that it did not find it necessary to inform about the PR activities, given that the objective of pushing the sponsored content was not to increase app downloads. It acknowledged that the ‘stealth marketing’ tactics were in place until December 2021.
Operator of Chinese social media platform TikTok in Japan paid influencers to spread videos on Twitter without giving a disclaimer to viewers, local media reported https://t.co/citm2xiVXM pic.twitter.com/Z0eZXEcyXa
— ANADOLU AGENCY (@anadoluagency) January 24, 2022
TikTok, however, refused to disclose information about payments made to the social media influencers. It has claimed to ensure that the audience is not misled by sponsored content. As of July last year, TikTok had surpassed 3 billion downloads.
How Indian government cracked down on Chinese apps including TikTok?
The government of India had permanently banned 59 Chinese apps, including ByteDance’s short video app TikTok, WeChat, Baidu, Alibaba’s UC Browser, Club Factory, BIGO Live and others. In June last year, the government had censored these apps. By the end of 2020, a total of 267 apps originating from China were banned in batches. PUBG was also banned since a Chinese company owned shares in the game.
The original action was initiated by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY), Government of India, under Section 69A of the IT Act, stating that these apps are engaging in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of state and public order. The government was not satisfied with the response given by these companies to the notices issued in June 2020. Thus, the government had initiated the process to ban these apps permanently and issued fresh notices.
A spokesperson of TikTok said that the company was evaluating the notice, and they would respond to it as appropriate. “TikTok was among the first companies to comply with the government of India directive issued on June 29, 2020. We continually strive to comply with local laws and regulations and do our best to address any concerns the government may have. Ensuring the privacy and security of all our users remains to be our topmost priority,” the statement further added.
After several popular Chinese apps were banned in the Indian Internet space, it gave way to Indian app developers to showcase their potential to the users. For example, the Chinese document scanning app CamScanner was banned by the Indian government that provided a large market for apps like Kaagaz Scanner to fill up the void. Similarly, non-Indian entities like Google, Facebook and others took the opportunity to fill the void for TikTok and launched special features in their apps (YouTube and Instagram) to create short videos just like the banned Chinese app.
The Modi government is also promoting India-made mobile applications and encouraging developers to develop solutions for Indian markets in several categories, including productivity, games and entertainment. In July 2020, the government had introduced Atmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge that received close to 7,000 entries from individual developers and companies from across the country.
