TikTok posts gratitude note for team in India days after slashing staff amid prolonged ban

TikTok India on Wednesday took to Instagram to reach out to its users and share a message of appreciation and gratitude for the 'Tiktok India Team'. This comes more than seven months after India had issued a countrywide ban on the app. 

The message shared by TikTok India's Instagram page reads, "Dear TikTok India Team, your hard work, commitment, enthusiasm, innovation, humor, and above all teamwork made us chase excellence every day. Thank you, for standing with us through thick and thin and for ensuring there was never a dull moment. Your unswerving loyalty and love have made us one big family. Our people will always be our inspiration. Albeit a smaller team, we hope to get the chance to relaunch TikTok in India and support the hundreds of millions of users, artists, storytellers, educators, and performers. Till then, remember to inspire creativity and enrich lives wherever you go. Love, TikTok India."

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On January 27, ByteDance, which owns Tiktok, announced the closure of its India business. TikTok's global interim head Vanessa Pappas and vice president for global business solutions Blake Chandlee in a joint email to employees communicated the decision of the company that it is reducing the team size and the decision will impact all employees in India.

TikTok Banned In India

In June last year, the Home Ministry had banned 59 Chinese Apps including Tik-Tok. The Centre had stated that it received many complaints from various sources including several reports about the misuse of these apps for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers that have locations outside India. Hence, in a move to protect the sovereignty of Indian Cyberspace and to ensure the interests of crores of Indian mobile users, the government stated that this was a major blow to China’s Digital Silk Route ambitions. This move had come amid the India-China standoff at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). In April 2019, TikTok was briefly banned in India by the Madras High Court for hosting 'pornographic and sleazy' content. Recently millions of Indian users had also millions of Indians called for a ban on the app after videos promoting violence against women went viral, with NCW chief Rekha Sharma seeking a total ban on it. Zoom too had been called out for security issues, with the government then issuing a notification for safe usage of the application.

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