A handful of people in India were apparently able to access the website for the popular Chinese video-streaming service TikTok on Friday. This is remarkable because the service was prohibited five years ago. People are talking a lot about the app coming back, but government sources have been quick to say that there is no official order to unblock the platform.
Some people can now see the website’s homepage, however it still doesn’t work fully. People can’t log in, upload content, or watch videos, and the mobile app is still not available on either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. People at the Department of Telecommunications said that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) still have orders to block the service, so it’s not obvious how some people were able to get to the website.
The first ban on TikTok and many other Chinese applications happened in 2020, when Indian and Chinese troops fought in the Galwan Valley. The administration said that the main grounds for the prohibition were worries about data security and national sovereignty.
This surprising turn of events comes just a few days after a string of good diplomatic moves between India and China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi talked about their countries’ relations earlier this week. The two countries announced a number of steps to build a “stable, cooperative, and forward-looking” relationship. These steps included restarting direct flights, restoring trade at the border, and encouraging investment.
Many people think that the website’s partial unblocking could be an early sign that the government is changing its mind. But government sources have made it clear that there hasn’t been a decision to repeal the prohibition.
The TikTok platform has also had problems like this in other parts of the world, especially in the U.S., where both the Biden and Trump administrations have raised security concerns and called for the Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the app’s U.S. business.