T

wenty-three-year-old Maulydia Yusliwan recalled how annoying it was for her extended family when her 10-year-old cousin would not put down her smartphone for a second at every family gathering, glued as she was to Tik Tok, a China-based music-video platform, and social network.

“The only time she interacted with us was when she asked us to be in her Tik Tok video,” she said.

Maulydia had known about Tik Tok but she only discovered the impact of the app on someone’s social life when she saw the effect on her preteen cousin.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Communications and Information Ministry temporarily blocked the app following a coordination meeting with the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry and the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI).

In a written statement received by The Jakarta Post on Tuesday, it was stated that the ministry had decided to block Tik Tok after learning that the app contained “pornography, inappropriate content and blasphemy”.

“This blocking is temporary until Tik Tok fixes and clears its illegal content,” said the ministry’s Information Application Director General Samuel A. Pangerapan.

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara was slated to meet with Tik Tok representative late Wednesday to discuss the ban.

So, what is Tik Tok, an app blocked by the government even before many Indonesians, at least those over 30 years old, had even heard of it?

Originally called Douyin in China, Tik Tok was launched in 2016 by Zhang Yimin, who is also the founder of Beijing-based news and information platform Toutiao. Tik Tok was brought to Indonesia last September by tech company ByteDance. The app allows its users to create short music videos.

To create content, users need to pick background music from the app’s music library first. After that, the app will record them doing whatever they want to do for 60 seconds. Users can also make their video more interesting by inserting a selection of stickers, filters or effects — like shivering or shaking — on it.

Although the app’s pages on Play Store and Apple Store state that it is rated PG (parental guidance needed) for user interaction, the app’s terms of service do not specify an age limit for users, which means anyone of any age can easily create an account.

Because of the lack of an age requirement, Tik Tok users in Indonesia mostly consist of teenagers and preteens, with Tik Tok rising in popularity rapidly thanks to its loyal users.

Similar to Instagram and Twitter, the growing popularity of Tik Tok has also given birth to a new culture of social media celebrity. In Tik Tok, users who manage to gain hundreds of views and likes on their videos will obtain the title “muser”, a Tik Tok term for popular users.

Some of these musers, who happen to be preteen or teenagers as well, capitalize on their own fame by charging their fans to meet and greet and take selfies with them.

One muser shot to instant fame recently.

Bowo Alpenliebe, also known as Prabowo Mondardo, is a Tik Tok muser who has become notorious, even among non-Tik Tok users, after a meet and greet event went wrong. On Monday, the 13-year-old, who has 790,000 followers on his Tik Tok account, organized a meet-and-greet event in East Jakarta, to which his followers were required to pay Rp 80,000 (US$5.57) for admission.

However, complaints arose after many fans, who had already paid, could not get to meet him, reportedly because the event was poorly managed. The protests quickly turned into public mockery of Bowo himself, as his followers stated that Bowo looked better on Tik Tok than in real life.

Social media expert Nukman Lutfie said that to gain instant fame, people did outrageous things on Tik Tok.

“Some of them will even resort to pranks, which could harm someone if they go wrong,” he said.