This week an article about India and the new Chinese app called Tik Tok, caught my attention and intrigued me. The article portrayed a young Indian man swaying while lip-syncing a song praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India. Tik Tok is the latest digital platform made by China which grabbed the attention of many Indian villages and small towns. Tik Tok is a social media platform for creating and sharing short videos. Tik Tok has become popular in many countries, however like many other social media platforms, India has become Tik Tok’s largest market, especially rural India. TikTok’s video-only interface makes it less elaborate and easier to use compared to platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, making it a bigger attraction in India. In the article the specific video it mentioned was portraying a man singing “Modi has single-handedly trounced everyone … Modi is a storm, you all now know,” and posting it on the Chinese video mobile application. This was just one of the many videos posted on Tik Tok in India that regarded politics. This is worrying many people because India is having an upcoming general election. With the general election coming up in India, politicians are starting to think Tik Tok could sway some people to vote a certain way. Because of this, many are calling for the ban of the app. Many are afraid of what happened with facebook in the United State’s could happen in India too. As many already know, there is evidence that Russia meddled in the United States presidential elections by spreading fake news through ads and fake accounts on Facebook, a popular social media platform in the United States. It is said that the fake news that was spread led to swaying the votes one way, however no one has found hard evidence on that. This situation is what Indian politicians are scared of and worried about, which is why so many are calling for the ban of Tik Tok.
