An Indian think tank has alleged that short video application Snack Video is actually just a rebranded version of Kwai — one of the 59 ‘Chinese’ apps that was banned in India in June. The think tank — Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research (C-DEP) — also alleged that Snack Video acquires user permissions that grant it access to critical and sensitive personal data, and doesn't protect underage users from data acquisition and leakage, among other things. Snack Video, at the moment is among the most popular short video apps in the country — if it were to be banned, a number of Indian short video apps stand to gain from it. C-DEP, on October 21, wrote a letter to the Home and IT ministries highlighting some of its concerns about Snack Video. Jaijit Bhattacharya, C-DEP’s president, confirmed the development to MediaNama, along with the authenticity of the letter. We have reached out to MEITY and Home Ministry enquiring whether they will investigate the veracity of accusations made by C-DEP against Snack Video. Who stands to gain from this? Snack Video has more than 100 million downloads on the Google Play Store alone, dwarfing many competitors available in the country. A number of Indian short video apps such as ShareChat's Moj, Times Group's MX TakaTak only have half as many downloads on the Google Play Store. Some other Indian short video apps such as Chingari, with just 10 million downloads on Play Store, are even further behind. These apps would…
News
Think tank writes to govt alleging short video app Snack Video is rebranded version of blocked app
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...