MADURAI: The

of

on Tuesday refused to set aside or modify its earlier interim order directing the central government to prohibit download of the Chinese App

after observing that inappropriate content is made available through it.

A division bench of Justices N Kirubakaran and SS Sundar had on April 3 issued an interim direction to the government to prohibit downloading of TikTok. The court also issued directions barring the media from telecasting videos made with the App. The court directions were in response to a public interest litigation by S Muthukumar of Madurai who stated that the App encouraged disturbing content and degraded culture.

On Tuesday, when the petition came for hearing again, the counsel appearing for the company that owns the App told the court that it has in place an AI software that detects and filters content such as “over 50-60% of skin show”. It was also submitted that they had been stepping up efforts to take down objectionable content and have so far removed 60 lakh videos from Indian users that violated community guidelines. On the part of the government, M Chandrasekar, director (rural)

License Service area, attached to the department of telecommunications, filed a counter affidavit to the effect that the department had no jurisdiction over the issue and that it came under the domain of the ministry of electronics and information technology and ministry of information and broadcasting and it was necessary that these departments were impleaded to implement the court directions.

After perusing the submissions, the court refused to modify its earlier directions and also appointed senior counsel Arvind P Datar as amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter and impleaded the two departments as mentioned in the counter by the telecommunications department.