A social media trend that has caught up recently is to remove Chinese apps after the accusations on China for spreading COVID-19 and to encroachment at the border intensified. This has led to Indian users uninstalling all the mobile applications owned by any Chinese.
The social media platform Tik Tok is where it all began. Some of the Tik Tok videos that had objectionable content came under the radar of the netizens who called for the boycott of the application. The fact that there was an already hate campaigning against the Chinese for spreading of COVID-19 didn’t help the Chinese.
This was also coupled with the border tensions that hit a rough patch in the past week. However, the netizens brought down the ratings of Tik Tok from 4.4 to 2.2 which was later reversed by Google.
The call to boycott China applications comes in the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking people to be vocal for local; to promote Indian businesses. To make it easy for people to differentiate between the applications that are owned by the Chinese and the ones that are not owned by them, an application called Remove China Apps have surfaced the Google Play Store. In less than 2 weeks, the application has over a million downloads and a rating of 4.4.
How does App work?
Once the ‘Remove China Apps’ is installed on your phone, it looks through all the applications in your device and tries to match it with its database to find those that have Chinese links. Ones that have matched is shown to you and a delete button is prompted beside the application that allows you to uninstall from the application.
The application is developed by a company called OneTouch AppLabs. Incidentally, it is the only application developed by the company. The log-in process of the application is simple. However, the application can only show third-party applications on the device but will not show pre-installed Chinese applications on Chinese smartphones like Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, etc.
When the outrage against Tik Tok happened, many users turned towards an application called Mitron which provides a similar function. However, it was later pointed out that the application was bought by a developer from Pakistan.
Source: India Times
