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With India’s TikTok Ban, the World’s Digital Walls Grow Higher

Censorship and politics are fracturing the global internet, isolating users and industries accustomed to ignoring national borders.

The making of a TikTok video in Hyderabad, India, in February.Credit...Noah Seelam/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The global internet is fracturing. And people like Anusmita Dutta are paying the price.

Ms. Dutta, 24, joined TikTok three years ago and now has more than 350,000 followers on the video app. From her home in Kolkata, in eastern India, she records funny skits, monologues, slice-of-life sketches — all stuff, she says, that people can easily relate to. She also finds videos from every corner of the earth using the app’s Discover feature.

TikTok makes her feel connected to the wider world. Which is why India’s decision this week to ban TikTok and scores of other Chinese apps was such a disappointment.

“Real talent came from this app in India,” Ms. Dutta said. Seeing it come to a sudden end was “obviously disheartening.”

TikTok, the first Chinese internet service to have a truly global fan base, is rapidly falling victim to China’s worsening diplomatic relations around the globe. It is yet another sign that the digital world, once thought of as a unifying space that transcended old divisions, is being carved up along the same national lines that split the physical one.

Tensions between India and China have run hot ever since a border clash in the Himalayas two weeks ago left 20 Indian soldiers dead. The government in New Delhi announced a ban on 59 Chinese apps late Monday, saying they were secretly transmitting users’ data to servers outside India.

India’s decision strikes at a number of China’s leading technology companies, including Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu. But perhaps none will be more affected than TikTok and its Beijing-based parent, ByteDance, which has built a huge audience in India as part of an aggressive and well-funded expansion around the world. TikTok has been installed more than 610 million times in India, according to estimates by the data firm Sensor Tower. In the United States, the app has been installed 165 million times.

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How China Is Changing Your Internet

What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse of the future — and American companies are taking notice.

Video Title: How China Is Changing Your Internet Video Description: In China, a sheltered internet has given rise to a new breed of app, and American companies are taking notice. What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse at the future. PART I: Intro 1. If you are sitting in the United States or Europe right now, you’ve probably never used a Chinese app, but the reality is, if you want to know how the internet will develop, China, the land once known for its cheap rip-offs, has actually become a guide to the future. PART II: The creation of the Chinese Swamp Monster 2.1 You know, the internet is the internet, but for China the internet is more like an intranet. It’s largely walled off from the Western world by this incredible complex system of filters and blocks that we call the Great Firewall. And basically the Great Firewall blocks any foreign site the Communist Party doesn’t think it can control. 2.2 So that means there is no Facebook, no Twitter, no Google. Instead, what filled the internet vacuum was a generation of Chinese copycats that have grown into huge companies. 2.3 So for Google, you had Baidu; for YouTube, you had Youku; for Twitter, you had Sina Weibo, and the list goes on and on. 2.4 It’s almost as if the Chinese internet is a lagoon as an aside to the greater ocean of the internet, and in that lagoon there are these swamp monster apps that bear some resemblance to the creatures in the ocean but are mutated in some ways because they evolved in a different kind of environment. PART III: The Chinese Swamp Monster Leaves the Pond 3.1 But things have started to shift, in the sense that before, no one outside of the lagoon really cared about the swamp monsters. But now all of a sudden, some of the features they’ve developed are so amazing that Western apps are trying to copy them. And the greatest example of this is WeChat. 3.2 WeChat is an example of, for lack of a better word, a super-app. It’s a Swiss Army knife that basically does everything for you. 3.3 It’s your WhatsApp, Facebook, Skype and Uber. It’s your Amazon, Instagram, Venmo and Tinder. But it’s other things we don’t even have apps for. There are hospitals that have built out whole appointment booking systems. There are investment services. There are even heat maps that show how crowded a place is, be it your favorite shopping mall or a popular tourist site. The list of services goes on basically forever. 3.4 But it’s not the variety of things you can do on WeChat that makes it so powerful, it’s the fact that they’re all in one app. So why does that matter? PART IV: The Power of the Super-App 4.0 These are real people. Using the app in real ways. (We just made up the story.) 4.1 Hypothetically, imagine you’re sitting at home and one day you notice your corgi is dirty. You open WeChat, hit a few buttons and a few hours later a man shows up at your door with some shampoo and a big vacuum. Your dog gets cleaned, and he looks great. You take a photo. You share it with your friends and tag the dog cleaning business. You haven’t left the app. 4.2 Your friend who likes Hello Kitty and works a boring office job is slacking off at work and looking at WeChat. She sees the photo of your clean corgi. She decides she wants her poodle cleaned. She clicks the tag on your photo and orders the same service. Within seconds the man with the big vacuum is on his way to her house. She pays him, and he’s happy because he got paid instantly on WeChat. She starts chatting with you to thank you. Neither of you have left the app. 4.3 While chatting, she tells you about a new, hip noodle joint. She says, “You have to come.” It’s a shlep, but you accept. She orders food while still at her desk. You order a taxi. She pays for the food. On the way to her house, the man with the big vacuum invests the money he earned from both of you into a wealth management product that’s probably a little too risky. Neither of you, nor the man with the big vacuum, have left the app. 4.4 Both of you arrive, and the app tells the kitchen you’re there. Your WeChat profile photo pops up on the wall. Its an old photo from that year you had that weird part in your hair. Of course, she makes a comment. Your food is served. You notice your meat is a bit overcooked, so you snap a photo and post a disparaging restaurant review. You’re already on your phone, and you remember you still owe your friend money because she paid. You transfer her money. Neither of you, the man with the big vacuum, nor the restaurant, have left the app. 4.5 At the restaurant: There are no menus. There are no waiters. There is no cashier. There is only WeChat. 4.6 By rolling so many functions into one single app, it’s altered the concept of virality. It’s no longer just videos or images or tweets that can go viral — it’s a dog washer, noodles, all sorts of companies and products that get the push of a social network. 4.7 Here in China, that network is 700 million people. Part V: The Costs of the Super-App 5.1 Sounds great, right? Well it is, but using a single app to find a date, schedule an oil change or notarize a document also enables WeChat to collect a staggering volume of personal data. 5.2 They know what you talk about, who you talk about it with, what you read, where you go, why you’re going there, who’s there, how you spend money when you’re online, how you spend money when you’re offline. The list goes on indefinitely. 5.3 For advertisers, this is miracle: It’s the combined data of Facebook, Amazon, Google and PayPal, all in one place. The problem is, all of the data is information Chinese companies are forced to share with the Chinese government, which has a long record of human rights violations and isn’t exactly shy about stalking its citizens. Part VI: Outro 6.1 So if you’re not in China, why does this matter? It matters because we’re starting to see a number of Western tech companies attempt to replicate super-apps like WeChat. 6.2 For the companies, it’s incredibly powerful, and for you and me it’s a convenient and even transformative technology. 6.3 But of course, it could also be problematic. Concentrating so much data in so few hands could lay the groundwork for an Orwellian world where companies and governments can track every single movement you make.

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What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse of the future — and American companies are taking notice.CreditCredit...Damir Sagolj/Reuters

China itself began putting up walls within the global internet years ago. By blocking Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook, Beijing created a controlled environment in which homegrown upstarts could flourish, and where the Communist Party could keep a tight grip on online conversation.

Now, though, Chinese tech businesses are trying to make it big overseas even as distrust of the Communist Party is growing in Washington and other Western capitals. The tensions have ensnared ByteDance as well as companies in computer chips, artificial intelligence and more. Huawei, the Chinese maker of smartphones and telecom equipment, has been largely cut off from American technology suppliers and is fighting to defend its business from accusations that it is a Trojan horse for Beijing’s cyberspies.

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The Bytedance Technology booth at the Digital China exhibition in Fuzhou, China, in 2019.Credit...China Stringer Network/Reuters

Governments worldwide are also becoming more interested in reclaiming control over digital speech and commerce, adding to the internet’s increasingly balkanized landscape. The European Union has taken a tough line on overseeing American giants such as Apple and Google, forcing them to adapt to local rules.

Dev Khare, a partner at the venture firm Lightspeed India, acknowledged that India’s app ban was a populist, “feel-good” step in some ways. He does not, however, see it as a bolt out of the blue.

“It’s something that China did a long time ago,” Mr. Khare said. “If this is what China does to the rest of the world, then the rest of the world has the right to do it to China.”

As of Tuesday evening, some TikTok users in India were receiving error messages when they tried to call up the app.

Nikhil Gandhi, the head of TikTok for India, said in a statement that the company had been invited to meet with Indian officials and respond to the decision. He added that TikTok had not shared information on its Indian users with the Chinese government or any other foreign government.

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How Facebook Is Changing Your Internet

Behind the scenes, Facebook is involved in high-stakes diplomatic battles across the globe that have begun fragmenting the internet itself.

The following video contains a Facebook newsfeed. While information contained in it is based on real posts and real events, the feed and characters depicted within it have been created for illustrative purposes. Section 1: INTRO On the surface Facebook seems pretty straight forward. You use it to spy on exes and make people jealous about that vacation you took that was actually a disaster. But in becoming such a central part of day-to-day communications Facebook has transformed into its own geopolitical force. One in five minutes spent online are spent on Facebook. It’s a cyber kingdom with a population of over 2 billion. That power has made the leaders of many countries feel threatened. So governments have started to push back, attempting to regain some control over how their citizens communicate. Our story begins here — where the fight between companies and countries has begun fragmenting the internet itself. TITLE: How Facebook is Changing Your Internet To understand Facebook’s role in how the internet is breaking apart, you first have to leave the U.S. Zuck: “Its great to be here in Barcelona with you” Zuck: “Its great to be here in Berlin” Zuck: “Its great to be here in India” Zuck: “I Wanted to come to Legos first” Want to win an election in Ecuador? Are you trying to build a business in Brazil? Network in the Netherlands? Or are you trying to have your single go no. 1 in Senegal? It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing — Facebook has become a necessity for real world success. Section 2: Expansion Model In part, that’s because the company has gone through extreme efforts to reach far flung corners of the globe. They’re putting satellites into space and developing internet-beaming solar powered drones. Here’s one taking off now. 1. Zuck: “Connectivity can’t be a privilege for just the rich and powerful. (It needs to be something that everyone shares, an opportunity for everyone.”) The company is subsidizing connectivity in the developing world with the mission to make Facebook accessible to all. Here on the outskirts of Nairobi, Facebook made a deal with a telecom provider and now customers of that company can use Facebook free of charge. For those users, Facebook might be their entire experience of the internet. “If you grew up and never had a computer and you’ve never used the internet and someone asked you if you wanted a data plan, you response would probably also be “what’s a data plan and why would I want one?” They call it “Free Basics” a kind of mini version of the internet that gives users free access to Facebook and a few other sites. They’re rolling it out in developing countries all around the world. So why does it matter if they gives away free Facebook access? KENYA - EX: 1 of Unintended Consequence Let’s say you live in Nairobi and your name is Phyl. You find some cheap handbags made of the finest chinese pleather and decide to sell them online. With Facebook offering free internet and just about everyone you know using the site, you decide there’s no need to pay for a shop, so you snap a photo of a blue bag, post it on your facebook page and soon customers from across East Africa are liking your photo. Some people even place orders, even a few who don’t have a data plan because they’re using Facebook’s free version of the internet. They’re happy because they found a bag and didn’t pay any sales tax or data fees. Your happy because you avoided renting a shop and got cash. So life is good. But then you realize, your entire economic existence is resting in the hands of a coder in a hoody who loves avocado toast sitting in Silicon Valley. The more you think about it, the more uncertainty there is. What would happen if Facebook decided to start taking a cut of your business? Or what would happen if the Kenyan government added fees to Facebook, would they pass it on to you? And what if you decided to cut them out and go straight to the customer yourself? How could you possibly have a chance against Facebook? Questions like these, have led some critics to compare Facebook’s dominance in places like Kenya to a form of digital colonialism. For Kenyans, these issues are still theoretical, but for others the issues are much more real. JAKARTA - Ex: of Unintended Consequence #2 Let’s say you live in Indonesia and you’re a devout Muslim man. You’re not convinced about this whole internet thing and you don’t want to spend a good chunk of your monthly income to get a connection. But your daughter keeps telling you, the internet thing really is a thing. So she sets you up with Facebook’s free version of the internet. Online you discover cat videos are surprisingly fun to watch. Then you see a video of your mayor. In it, he appears to say the Quran is lying. You can’t believe it. The video has millions of hits. NAT POP MAYOR AHOK: “Thus ladies and gentlemen, if you feel that you can’t vote for me because you’re afraid you will go to hell, you are being lied to, but that’s alright because this is your personal calling.” In response, you and hundreds of thousands of other people come out to protest calling for the mayor to be removed from office. Six-months-later he’s voted out of office. But the problem is — the video that got you so angry was edited to make the statement seem more provocative than it actually was. But you don’t know that. And you don’t even have the ability to seek out other information because Facebook’s free version of the internet only gives you access to a few sites. So you’re left only with — A Facebook reality. Section 3: Cause And Facebook’s reality is one that’s based on an algorithm. And that algorithm rewards engagement, which often means prioritizing inflammatory posts. Combine that with Facebook’s ambitious mission to bring internet to the developing world and you’ve got a problem. On one hand, Facebook’s efforts bring information to more of the world than ever before. On the other hand, you have the world as it looks today, where guys like your Uncle Joe bicker on behalf of candidates using rumors and propaganda. Trump Supporter: “Fuck political correctness, Build the wall!” This is a space where protests flare up around lies and measured voices are shouted down by radical ones. Duterte Nat Pop: “President Obama is a son of a whore” Trump nat pop: “We will have so much winning if I get elected” Wilders: There is lots of Moroccan scum in Holland Mr. Zuckerberg has said the company is working on squashing fake news, but the problem goes further into what gets promoted and why. But for Facebook, there isn’t a lot of incentive to cut down on the half truths and misconceptions. Its main goal is to hold its audience captive and grow its community ever larger. Written Quote on Screen: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” At stake is the future of the internet itself. Facebook and only a handful of other major internet companies control our online lives, and each is aggressively trying to expand. Does the Kenyan government care if Facebook has allowed Phyl to circumnavigate their tax system? Does the Indonesian government care that 200,000 people are in their streets protesting? The answer is yes. Section 4: Effect The end result pits countries against companies. And not all governments are willing to cede power to Facebook. So they create new laws to govern their country’s digital space that cater to their interests. This goes against the way the internet was original supposed to work, as a way for people to share information without borders or rules. Now, Instead of one internet — there are many. Some are controlled by countries, others by companies. And everyone wants more control. Section 5: China Comparison There’s no better place to see the fragmentation of the internet than in China. Nat Pop Zuck: Xin Nian Kuai Le China’s internet is cut off from the rest of the world by filters that keep websites like Facebook from working. Tank Man Clip It’s sort of an anti-internet. Instead of facilitating free communication, it often works as a means to control that communication. Instead of connecting China to the world, it cuts it off. According to China’s internet, this event never even happened. But if you compare China’s internet to Facebook, some uncomfortable parallels emerge. While facebook lets you post plenty of articles and links from the greater internet, it also operates by its own rules. Just like China’s internet, a central authority tracks what you do and decides what you see. Most of the time your feed is hiding a baby photo from that girl Jane who may have been in your 4th grade class, but you can’t quite remember. But sometimes it’s hiding more. For example, these images were all banned from Facebook because they didn’t meet its community standards and now they’re in this video. We think it’s important to show them, but because we did, Facebook could now block our video. [Cut to black] OUTRO The question is: Whose values are we following? Should we cater to the values of Facebook’s algorithm and policies in order to be heard? Even understanding Facebook’s values can be difficult. In many places they promote free speech, yet in others, they are willing to consider censoring. They push for encryption in some places, but turn around and in other places to fight privacy laws that would damage their ad business. That inconsistency is driving fragmentation. And while Facebook claims to be connecting people, they’re doing it their way, with their rules. And you don’t really have a say in it. That’s because Facebook isn’t a democracy, it’s a business. And their business interests are changing the future of your internet. ENDIT

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Behind the scenes, Facebook is involved in high-stakes diplomatic battles across the globe that have begun fragmenting the internet itself.CreditCredit...Albert Gea/Reuters

When it comes to using the consumer marketplace as a geopolitical cudgel, China is far more used to giving than receiving.

After a National Basketball Association executive tweeted support for the Hong Kong protests last year, Chinese state-run television canceled broadcasts of basketball games. After the police in Canada arrested a Huawei executive in 2018, Beijing halted shipments of Canadian canola oil. After a committee in Norway awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident, China curbed imports of Norwegian salmon.

India buys a wide variety of goods from China. But by targeting Chinese-made mobile apps, the nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone after a sector of special importance to Beijing. China’s giant internet companies are running out of new internet users to win over at home. They see in India a chance to apply lessons from their growth in China to another huge market brimming with potential.

Indians, in return, have taken to many Chinese apps with gusto — TikTok in particular.

Ankush Bahuguna, a TikTok user in New Delhi who is in his late 20s, said other platforms might be able to scoop up the app’s fans in India if TikTok became unavailable. But it would take time for them to develop into something as special as TikTok.

“TikTok is one of the most accepting platforms when it comes to embracing different people,” Mr. Bahuguna said. “I’ve never seen a platform celebrate so many male belly dancers or male makeup artists or gay couples. Literally anyone.”

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TikTok has been installed more than 610 million times in India, according to estimates by Sensor Tower.Credit...Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

TikTok’s ease of use made it a uniquely democratic platform for users, he said. “It empowered them in a way where you don’t really need to speak English to be a content creator or have a fancy camera.”

One such creator is Saddam Khan, 22, who works as a porter at a New Delhi railway station and has more than 41,000 TikTok followers. He was carrying two briefcases on his head for a customer when he heard that India had banned the app.

“I just wanted to throw the bag away and cry,” Mr. Khan said.

Having such a large following on TikTok has not yet changed his life, he said. But he is sad that his shot at fame now seems dashed.

“There is a ripple effect in TikTok,” Mr. Khan said. “Boys from small villages become overnight heroes. It changed their lives. Their status in society grew.”

Indian officials have long had suspicions about the app. Last year, it was removed from Indian app stores after a court ruled that the app spread pornography, though it was later reinstated. Indian politicians have also criticized the platform for hosting hateful and inflammatory material.

Executives at Indian internet companies largely cheered the government’s move against their Chinese competitors this week. Naveen Tewari is the founder and chief executive of InMobi, a company in Bengaluru that operates two digital platforms, Glance and Roposo.

As tensions between India and China worsened over the past few weeks, video creators in India had already begun to rethink their choice of platform and migrate to Roposo, Mr. Tewari said. Now that TikTok seems down for the count, he is eager to capitalize.

“The first thing we’re doing is just to assure the millions of users of TikTok that they have a platform that is homegrown,” Mr. Tewari said. “They can absolutely come there and continue their entertainment that they always had, probably in a slightly more responsible way.”

Watchdog groups, however, have noted with concern the Modi government’s tendency to use sweeping policy instruments for political ends.

“In terms of being a singular act of web censorship, it’s impacted more Indians than any before,” said Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, which promotes digital liberties in India.

The current political climate in India is one in which nationalist sentiment is likely to be accommodated above other considerations, Mr. Gupta said.

“Any kind of public policy response which is premised on grounds of national security needs to emerge from well-defined criteria, which seems to be absent here,” he said.

Sameer Yasir contributed reporting.

Raymond Zhong is a technology reporter. Before joining The Times in 2017, he covered India's fast-moving economy from New Delhi for The Wall Street Journal. More about Raymond Zhong

Kai Schultz is a reporter in the South Asia bureau, based in New Delhi. He has reported from five countries in the region and previously lived in Kathmandu, Nepal. More about Kai Schultz

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Digital Walls Are Rising As India Bans TikTok And Other Chinese Apps. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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