TikTok Ban: App May Reel Under $6 Billion Loss Following Ban By India

TikTok bosses could reportedly face a loss of as much as $6 billion following the Indian government's decision to ban the app as well as 58 others from Chinese tech giants, according to new reports.

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has invested more than $1 billion in India, which was its top growth market with more than 600 million downloads. But now, the Indian government’s ban has cut off hundreds of millions of users, according to Chinese media reports (via Forbes).

India banned the apps for allegedly misusing user data and passing them on to the Chinese government, a claim that has been denied by TikTok’s owner.

The ban has also slashed the earnings of a number of influencers and social media stars in the country.

When TikTok was briefly banned last year after a state court alleged that it encouraged pornography, ByteDance said that the decision cost "financial losses" of up to $500,000 a day. The ban also put more than 250 jobs at risk, the company said in a court filing.

Although TikTok has been around for a while, it became popular during the lockdown, with millions of people uploading short clips of themselves dancing to their favorite songs or lipsynching to them.

Despite TikTok's popularity, there have been repeated calls to ban the app over security issues.

In the U.S., there has been a reported national security investigation into how TikTok stores personal data and its alleged censorship of sensitive content.

In March, Republican Senator Josh Hawley spoke about the introduction of legislation banning federal employees from using TikTok on their devices.

“TikTok is scooping up immense amounts of data and they are sharing it with Beijing; they are required to,” Hawley told reporters after a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on big tech’s connections to China, Reuters reported.

“For federal employees, it really is a no-brainer. It’s a major security risk...do we really want Beijing having geolocation data of all federal employees? Do we really want them having their keystrokes,” he continued.

There are about 26.5 million monthly active users in the U.S., and 60% of them are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said last year.