TikTok Parent ByteDance Starts Hiring in India: Is the Ban Over for Chinese App?

After more than four years of ban, TikTok made a comeback to India, or it appeared to do so, when its website became accessible once again last week. While the company remained mum about the speculation, the government cleared the air, saying the ban persists. But a new development has rekindled the doubt over whether TikTok is coming back to India. TikTok’s parent company has posted two new job roles in India, hinting at a potential reopening of its office in Gurugram, Haryana.

According to the job postings on LinkedIn, ByteDance is looking for a ‘Content Moderator’ for the Bengali language and a ‘Wellbeing Partnership and Operations Lead’. While these roles might look different from each other, they are both associated with the company’s Trust and Safety Division, responsible for content moderation and user safety online. ByteDance’s listings state that the first role requires the person to monitor and filter content on TikTok, while the second one is a senior role under which the selected candidate will build wellbeing programmes, manage partner organisations, and ensure compliance with global policies.

Is TikTok coming back?

The postings do not hint at any possible ban lift on TikTok, but ByteDance hiring for someone to fill in the ‘Operations Lead’ position tells a different story from what the government claimed recently. The job postings do not merely necessitate a comeback of TikTok, and amid the government’s official stance on the ban, the app remains unavailable in the app marketplaces in India. These job postings could be linked to the company’s plan to slightly expand its India operations, which it had to wind down after the TikTok ban. Although TikTok was discontinued, other services and apps from ByteDance, including Resso, continued to work until last year.

ByteDance has not officially confirmed the comeback, but the internet was quick to speculate if its once-favourite short-form video remix platform was coming back. TikTok was all the rage back in 2019, but its Chinese association cost it its India operations after the Galwan Valley skirmish in 2020. The government banned TikTok alongside 119 other apps with China linkage, leading to their delisting from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store. At the time of the ban, TikTok had about 200 million users in India, representing the biggest user base outside of China.

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