New Delhi: TikTok layoffs have now been announced adding to the layoff woes that is currently plaguing the tech industry. Reports suggest that the entire India team of TikTok was fired, which amounts to around 40 employees. A spokesperson has confirmed the TikTok layoffs in a statement. “We have taken the decision to close our India remote sales support hub, which was put in place at the end of 2020 to provide support to our global and regional sales teams. We greatly appreciate these employees and their impact on our company, and will ensure they are supported at this difficult time,” he said.
Reason for TikTok Layoffs
While the company has not given any official reason for firing employees in India, it has reportedly been done as the Indian Government is constantly banning Chinese apps in India. The ByteDance owned app was banned in India by the Government in the year 2020 at a time when the country was the second largest app for the market. Indian Government had cited “aspects relating to data security and safeguarding the privacy of 130 crore Indians” while banning the app along with 300 other popular Chinese apps.
“The Ministry of Information Technology, invoking it’s power under section 39A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology Rules 2009 and in view of the emergent nature of the threats has decided to block 59 apps since in view of information available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India,” said a statement from the Ministry of Electronics and IT while banning the app. However, the ban was lifted temporarily after that. Nevertheless, the Indian Government’s continued crackdown on Chinese apps could have led to TikTok layoffs.
Security Concerns with TikTok
Prior to the app getting banned a Check Point Research had highlighted that there were multiple vulnerabilities in TikTok that could have allowed attacks to manipulate content on user accounts and even extract confidential personal information saved on these accounts. Tiktok’s subdomain https://ads.tiktok.com was vulnerable to XSS attacks, a type of attack in which malicious scripts are injected into otherwise benign and trusted websites, added the research.
