India is thinking about bringing back TikTok as relations with China improve. But experts warn against lifting the ban. A researcher says TikTok is not just a fun app — it is a tool used by the Chinese state to spread its influence.
Prasiddha Sudhakar, a disinformation researcher at the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), said TikTok continues to serve the Communist Party of China (CPC).
“TikTok must stay banned as it remains a massive influence operation of the CPC and its entire goal is very clearly to propagate pro-China narratives,” Sudhakar told Firstpost.
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She also said the app lacks basic transparency and treats sensitive topics differently from other platforms. “There is no transparency in TikTok that we see across other platforms, and there are huge discrepancies in the way that they allow, let’s say, materials about Tibet or Xinjiang, compared to other mainstream platforms,” she explained.
What the Research Shows?
NCRI researchers studied TikTok’s impact and published their findings in Frontiers in Social Psychology. The studies show that TikTok pushes pro-China content while blocking or reducing critical content.
Study 1: Comparing TikTok with Other Platforms
When TikTok was compared with Instagram and YouTube on sensitive topics about China, TikTok showed far more pro-CPC content and much less content critical of China.
Study 2: Biased Recommendations
Normally, platforms recommend content based on what users like or follow. For example, liking dog videos brings you more dog videos. But TikTok acted differently. Even when users liked and commented on anti-CPC content four times more, the app still showed them three times more pro-CPC content.
This suggests that TikTok is designed to push pro-China messages no matter what users want.
Study 3: Changing User Opinions
Researchers also found that TikTok slowly shaped how people viewed China. The more time users spent on the app, the more positively they thought about China’s human rights record and even saw China as a good travel destination.
Warning for India
Sudhakar said these findings should be a warning for India as reports suggest the government may rethink the TikTok ban. She stressed that allowing TikTok to return would give China an unfair advantage.
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