Bytedance's TikTok Trajectory

2 min read RJ Naren

Amidst this coronavirus fever, patriotic marketing fever has skyrocketed to a different level in our country. We all know that there is a growing hatred feeling about China for various reasons. Particularly when Sonam Wangchuck "3 idiots" inspiration, Ladakh based Engineer requested to stop the usage of Chinese apps by our Indians, when he stressed it out on banning TikTok. Video went viral all over India and made many to uninstall the app. Famous Actor Milind Soman uninstalled the TikTok app and created a hashtag on Twitter calling boycott Chinese products. Added to this, a new app sprouted into our market called Mitron with similar features making it a huge hit with 5 lakh downloads.

With the increasing Chinese military activities on Ladakh. Many supported this moment to contain China with the help of the ‘bullet’ but also with the ‘wallet’.  

But on the contrary, a different thing happened. Playstore removed about 5 million spamming reviews to bring back the TikTok rating to its 4.4 ratings. It didn’t stop there, the Mitron app has been suspended due to its content copy policy.

Now, do we have a layman perspective on play store policy? We need to know two important policies:

• As per one of the guidelines specified in the comment posting policy of Google Play, users aren't allowed to manipulate the ratings of an app. This was perhaps the reason why Google favored TikTok and removed the reviews and ratings that were not more than the mass attack against the app.
• Play Store has a “Spam and Minimum Functionality Policy” and can take down apps, among other things, for repetitive content. Examples of violations include “Copying content from other apps without adding any original content or value” and “Creating multiple apps with highly similar functionality, content, and user experience”.

 Now with all these conditions. We need to analyze the trend before we get influenced. 

With the given massive penetration of cheap, easily consumable Chinese products in the Indian market. Can our country be able to micro-manage or produce such products at the Chinese cost?

What’s your opinion?