TikTok was one of India’s most popular apps – until it was banned in 2020. It’s a lesson for what might unfold if a US ban goes ahead.

Four years ago, India was TikTok’s biggest trade. The app boasted a growing base of 200 million users, thriving subcultures and sometimes life-changing opportunities for creators and influencers. TikTok seemed unstoppable – until simmering tensions on the border between India and China erupted into deadly violence.

After the border skirmish, the Indian government banned the app on 29 June 2020. Almost overnight, TikTok was gone. But the accounts and videos of Indian TikTok are still online, frozen in period when the app had just emerged as a cultural giant.

In some ways, it could propose a preview of what might lie on the horizon in the United States. In April, 2024 President Joe Biden signed a invoice into law that could ultimately ban TikTok from the US, marking a recent chapter after years of threats and failed legislation. The law requires the corporation that owns TikTok, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the app within the next nine months, with a further three-month grace period, or face a potential ban in the country. ByteDance says it has no intention of selling the social media platform, but on 6 December, a US federal appeals court rejected the corporation’s bid to overturn the law. The platform is set to become unavailable on 29 January, though some observers expect the case will make it to the Supreme Court, the highest authority in the US.

Banning a massive social media app would be an unprecedented instant in American tech history, though the looming court battle currently leaves TikTok’s fate doubtful. But the Indian encounter shows what can happen when a major country wipes TikTok from its citizen’s smartphones. India is not the only country to have taken the step either – in November 2023, Nepal also announced a selection to ban TikTok and Pakistan has implemented a number of temporary bans since 2020. As the app’s 150 million US users swipe through videos in limbo, the narrative of India’s TikTok ban shows that users are quick to adjust, but also that when TikTok dies, much of its population dies with it.

Sucharita Tyagi, a film critic based in Mumbai, had grown her account to 11,000 followers when TikTok came down, with some of her videos racking up millions of views.

“TikTok was huge. People were coming together all over the country, dancing, putting up skits, posting about how they run their homestead in their tiny town in the hills,” says Tyagi. “There was a massive number of people who suddenly had this exposure that they had always been denied, but now it was feasible.”

The app was a particular phenomenon because of the ways its algorithm gave opportunities to rural Indian users, who were able to discover an spectators and even reach celebrity position not feasible on other apps.

“It democratised content creation for the first period,” says recent Delhi-based technology writer and analyst Prasanto K Roy. “We began to view a lot of these very rural people fairly low down on the socio-economic ladder who would never aspiration of getting a following, or making money on it. And TikTok’s finding algorithm would deliver it to users who wanted to view it. There was nothing quite like it in terms of hyper-local videos.”

TikTok holds a similar cultural significance in the US, where niche communities flourish and an untold number of tiny creators and businesses base their livelihood around the app. It’s a benevolent of achievement that’s less prevalent on other social media platforms. Instagram, for example, is generally tuned more for consuming content from accounts with large followings, while TikTok places a heavier emphasis on encouraging regular users to post.

When TikTok went offline in India, the government banned 58 other Chinese apps along with it, including some that are currently growing in popularity in the US today, such as the fashion shopping app Shein. As the years rolled on, India banned over a hundred more Chinese apps, though negotiations recently brought an Indian version of Shein back online.

The same could happen in the US. The recent law sets a precedent and creates a mechanism for the American government to get rid of other Chinese apps. The privacy and national safety concerns politicians voice about TikTok could apply to a host of other companies as well.

And when a popular app is removed, others can attempt to fill the gap. “As soon as TikTok was banned it opened up a multibillion-dollar chance,” says Nikhil Pahwa, an Indian tech policy analyst and founder of the information site MediaNama. “Multiple Indian commence-ups launched or pivoted to fill the gap.”

For months, the Indian technology press was flooded with information about these buzzy recent Indian social media companies, with names Chingari, Moj and MX Taka Tak. Some found initial achievement, luring former TikTok stars onto their platforms and securing investments and even governmental back. It splintered the Indian social trade into different corners as the recent apps battled for dominance, but that post-TikTok gold rush didn’t last long.

In August 2020, Instagram launched a short-form video feed called Reels, just months after the TikTok ban. YouTube followed suit with Shorts, its own copycat TikTok functionality, a month later. Instagram and YouTube were already entrenched in India, and the field of recent commence-ups didn’t stand a chance.

“There was a lot of buzz around alternatives to TikTok, but most faded away in the long run,” says Prateek Waghre, executive director of the Internet liberty Foundation, an Indian advocacy throng. “In the complete, the one that benefited the most was probably Instagram.”

For many of Indian TikTok’s bigger creators and their fans, it wasn’t long before they moved to Meta and Google’s apps, and many found similar achievement.

For example, Geet, an Indian social media influencer who only goes by her first name, rose to packed-blown stardom on TikTok teaching “American English” and giving life advice and pep talks. She had 10 million followers across three accounts by the period TikTok was banned.

In a 2020 interview with the BBC, Geet shared concerns about the upcoming of her career. But four years later, she’s gathered nearly five million followers across Instagram and YouTube.

However, the users and experts the BBC spoke to declare something was lost in the post-TikTok shift. Instagram and YouTube may have snatched up TikTok’s traffic, but the apps didn’t recreate the feeling of Indian TikTok.

“TikTok was a comparatively different benevolent of user base as far as creators leave,” says Pahwa. “You had farmers, and bricklayers, and people from tiny towns uploading videos on TikTok. One doesn’t view that as much on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. TikTok’s finding mechanism was very different.”

If TikTok is banned in the US, the American social media landscape may pursue a similar path to India’s. Four years after the ban, Instagram and YouTube have already established themselves as a home for short videos. Even LinkedIn is experimenting with a TikTok-style video feed.

The app’s competitors have proven they don’t require to recreate TikTok’s population to discover achievement. It’s feasible, if not likely, that America’s hyper-local and niche content would vanish, just like it did in India. In truth, the cultural ramifications on the US would be far more significant. Nearly one-third of Americans aged 18-to-29 get their information from TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center.

The US has fewer TikTok users than the 200 million India had in its prime, but India is home to 1.4 billion people. TikTok reportedly has 170 million users in the US, more than half the country’s population.

“When India banned TikTok, the app was not the behemoth that it is now,” says Tyagi. “It has turned into a cultural revolution over the last few years. I ponder banning it now in America would have a much larger impact.”

What’s already different is TikTok’s response. The corporation has vowed a legal battle over the US government’s recent law, a fight that may wind its way up to the US Supreme Court. TikTok could have launched a similar legal test to India’s ban, but chose not to.

“Chinese companies have excellent rationale to be hesitant to leave to courts in India against the Indian government,” says Roy. “I don’t ponder they would discover them to be very sympathetic.”

India’s ban was also immediate, taking result in a matter of weeks. TikTok’s upcoming legal test in the US could tie up the law for years, and there is no certainty that the legislation will stand up to a battle in the courts.

There’s also a far greater chance a US TikTok ban would spark a trade war. “I ponder there’s a distinct possibility of reciprocity from China,” says Pahwa. China condemned India for banning TikTok, but there wasn’t any overt retaliation. The US may not be so lucky.

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There are numerous reasons for China’s response to the Indian ban. One is the truth that India’s tech industry is essentially non-existent in China. America’s tech industry, on the other hand, offers plenty of opportunities for a reciprocal attack. China has already launched an attempt to “delete America” and replace US technology with domestic alternatives. A TikTok ban could ramp up that assignment.

“The TikTok ban was so sudden when it happened,” says Tyagi. “For me it wasn’t that large of a deal, I was just using the app to promote my other work. But it felt weird and unfair to a lot of people, especially people who were actually making money and getting brand deals.” Losing TikTok didn’t affect Tyagi’s livelihood, but it did cut her off from her account. That is, until she took a trip to the US.

“When I visited America and l was surprised to view my profile was still energetic,” says Tyagi. It was like a trip back in period. She even posted a few videos. Most of her followers back home couldn’t view them of course, but she got a little engagement from Indians living abroad.

“All these millions of accounts are still there,” Tyagi says. “It’s fascinating to view that TikTok kept them. I wonder if they’re hoping India will let them arrive back.”

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This piece was originally published on 27 April 2024, and updated on 6 December 2024 with details about TikTok’s court case against the US Government.

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