“Aur Karo Videos Dislike”: Just What Everyone is Thinking After the PUBG Ban

Technology

“Aur Karo Videos Dislike”: Just What Everyone is Thinking After the PUBG Ban

pubgbannedinindia
Illustration: Reynold Mascarenhas

In June, India had banned 59 apps with Chinese links after a violent clash in the Galwan Valley between troops from both sides. The ban included popular apps like TikTok, UC Browser and Weibo. For weeks, there was talk around why PUBG hadn’t been banned, along with some other popular Chinese apps.

After fresh confrontations across the LAC this week, the ban on PUBG has arrived. The Indian government has banned 118 mobile applications, including PUBG, in the interest of “sovereignty and integrity of India, Defence of India, security of the state and public order”. Section 69 of the Information Technology Act has been invoked.

The list of banned apps includes PUBG Mobile, PUBG Mobile Lite, Ludo All Star, Baidu, Baidu Express Edition, FaceU and Tencent Weiyun among others.

“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India invoking its power under section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 and in view of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 118 mobile apps since in view of information available they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order,” the Ministry said in an official release.

The ministry said it had received complaints about some mobile apps “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users” data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India.

“On the basis of these and upon receiving of recent credible inputs that information posted, permissions sought, functionality embedded as well as data harvesting practices of above stated Apps raise serious concerns that these Apps collect and share data in surreptitious manner and compromise personal data and information of users that can have a severe threat to security of the State,” the ministry said.

PUBG is one of the most popular apps in the country. There are close to 33 million active PUBG players in India, according to reports. The game clocks some 13 million daily users, NDTV reports.

A PUBG ban did exactly what one would expect, unleashed a plethora of memes and funny commentary on social media. And this is what the most common reaction was.

Of course, young India is miffed, but if there’s someone out there who REALLY loves this ban, it is desi parents.

One Chinese app after another, there’s no respite.

Is there going to be an Indian version of the game by Mukesh Ambani? JIO PUBG anyone?

A minute’s silence for everyone who bought a Royal Pass.

PUBG fans mocked TikTok fans in June. The tide has turned, and how.

Gamers are going to miss PUBG. Sad reacs only.

Janta maaf nahi karegi, Modi ji.

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