Indian politicians accuse China-made app Helo of election interference and call for TikTok to be banned
- Complaints have been made against Helo, an app by Beijing-based tech company ByteDance, for running doctored pictures of politicians with sensationalised text
- Another of the company’s apps, TikTok, has been variously accused of opening up children to exploitation by sexual predators
On Tuesday, The Economic Times newspaper reported that India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had asked Google and Apple to pull video social media platform TikTok from its mobile application stores. The South China Morning Post was unable to independently verify the report.
The news follows an order of the Madras High Court, located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, on April 3 that banned TikTok over concerns that children who used the app were vulnerable to exploitation by sexual predators.
TikTok is rated 12+ on the Apple app store and has a “teen maturity” rating on Google Play, but United States-based Common Sense Media, which reviews tech products for families, recommends that children be at least 16 years old to use the app.
