TikTok ratings fall as netizens call for ban

BENGALURU: What started as an argument between two influencers earlier this month on video application YouTube and TikTok has now snowballed into a controversy. Internet users across India called for the ban of TikTok, bringing down its rating on Google’s Play Store from 4.6 stars to 2. The Chinese short video application is owned by ByteDance, which — at $100 billion — is the world’s most valued private technology company.
TikTok Lite, a version that works on lower-end smartphones, has seen ratings crash to 1.1 stars. India is the fastest-growing and the largest market for TikTok, where it has close to 200 million monthly active users. While TikTok saw 107 million downloads in April 2020 globally, a 2.5x increase from the previous year, nearly 22% of those came from India.