Since China has infiltrated India and PM Modi’s speech on self-reliance, a cry has gone out among the Indians for removing Chinese products from the market. This initiative quickly moved online, and people started using Indian apps instead of their Chinese counterparts. An app is known as Remove China Apps, ‘ which recently appeared on the play store quickly gained 5 million downloads. Google removed the app from the play store immediately after it was reported. The app helped identify and remove apps of Chinese origin. Google responded by saying it violated the Google Play policy. This app was put up by Jaipur-based OneTouch AppLabs. This is the second app to be taken down by Google after Mitro, which was a replacement for Tiktok. Both these apps were taken down in a matter of days. Remove China apps topped the Google free apps chart for two days, even after being launched recently on May 17. It shows the anti-Chinese sentiment in the mind-set of Indian people right now who also blame China for the Covid-19 pandemic. Zoom is back on top of the free apps list on Google Play, followed by the government’s contact-tracing app Aarogya Setu. As mentioned in Google Developer Policy Center, Google doesn’t “allow apps that attempt to deceive users or enable dishonest behavior including but not limited to apps which are determined to be functionally impossible.
The users of Remove China app just had to tap on Scan Now to scan their phone, and the app would list all the Chinese-origin apps installed on the phone. After the Scan was complete, a delete option would appear when tapped would uninstall all the apps of Chinese origin. Though OneTouch AppLabs hasn’t responded to any media requests, it thanked its users on twitter to make it a success and asked them to continue this initiative.
TikTok, a popular short-video app, was also in the headlines recently after the YouTube vs. Tiktok issue in India. They are a Chinese company developed by Byte dance whose headquarters is in Beijing, China. People started giving Tiktok on Google play store a 1-star rating all across India because of the anti-Chinese sentiments. Things took a turn when Amir and other Tiktok users reported Carry Minati of cyberbullying in his YouTube video. This led to YouTube taking down Carry’s video that would have broken the record of being the first 10 million liked the non-musical video. Carry said his statements and dialogues in the video against Amir was taken out of context. #bringbackcarryminatiyoutubevideo started trending on youtube soon after people thought this war was going to end. TikTok also took down Amir Faizal’s account because of the various complaints. This started with Maneka Sanjay Gandhi, an animal activist, and a politician took to Twitter to raise the issue of violence towards animals on TikTok.
