- Google has banned the Mitron app from its Play Store, hailed as India ‘s reaction to TikTok citing policy violation of the play store.
Google has banned the Mitron app from its Play Store, hailed as India ‘s reaction to TikTok.
The app, which allowed users to post short videos, quickly gained popularity (clocking 5 million downloads in less than a month) by riding on the vocal-for-local call of the PM as well as on the country’s prevailing anti-China feeling. (TikTok is an App in China).
But a series of scandals quickly caught it up.
The app was dubbed as the brainchild of an IIT student from Roorkee named Shivank Aggarwal. But this founder ‘s identity was called into question after no one was able to identify any person’s digital presence by this name.
In addition, the entire source code of the Mitron app, including its complete collection of features and user interface, was purchased for $34 (Rs 2,600) from Pakistani software developer firm, Qboxus.
Google soon red-flagged the software and agreed to suspend it for violating its policy on ‘spam and poor features.’
The app should provide users with a specific degree of accessibility and acceptable user experience according to the policy. Another policy provision describes a ‘repetitive content,’ implying that ‘copying material from other applications without inserting any original content or merit’ is a violation.
The research carried out also found that 5 million users who downloaded the app would be worried about their privacy.
The app had no definite privacy policy as of 12 noon, May 30. However, this was revised a few hours later, with the company incorporating privacy policies under the privacy protection of the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).
Under these privileges, app users can monitor their data or have it deleted or ask the provider of the device not to sell user data. The privacy policy, however, is called CCPA and refers only to people residing in California, United States. In other words, it’s not applicable to Indian users.
The app is still suspended in the Play Store but if they believe the app meets basic policy standards, the makers can appeal to Google.
The basic reason for suspension seems the violations of the policies and data insecurity. People should be more aware about such things these days and shouldn’t get emotional because data privacy is an important thing. It will be interesting to see what things follow up in the coming times.
