TikTok has removed over 60 lakh videos from its platform between July 2018 and April 2019 for violating community guidelines, a company spokesperson told MediaNama. “TikTok in no way endorses or promotes content that is in violation of our community guidelines,” said Sachin Sharma, Director (Sales and Partnerships), TikTok India. He also said that steps are being taken to ensure that unlawful content gets blocked before being released on the app. MediaNama has reached out to TikTok with further questions and will update this story once they reply. Sharma’s statement comes just days after a notice was sent by MeitY to TikTok and Helo over alleged unauthorised data sharing, anti-national activities on the platform, and Helo paying a huge sum for putting 11,000 morphed political ads on other social media platforms. The notice was sent after RSS affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch, on July 13, wrote a letter to the prime minister asking for a ban on TikTok and Helo claiming that TikTok had become a hub for “anti-national content” that was capable of disrupting the “fabric of our society”. On July 22, four days after receiving the notice from the government, ByteDance - TikTok and Helo’s parent company - said that it would establish a data centre in India to store Indian users’ data locally. ByteDance claims that TikTok has 120 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India, while Helo has about 50 million.
