TikTok has suggested that it will bid goodbye to the Hong Kong market after China's introduction of the national security law for the city. The ByteDance-owned app has said that it will exit Hong Kong in a few days and won't share users' data with the government of the city. Read on to know more about the popular short video-sharing platform's decision.
TikTok to leave Hong Kong
ByteDance will remove the TikTok app from Hong Kong's app stores due to its non-compliance with the national security law. A TikTok spokesperson told Reuters, "In light of recent events, we've decided to stop operations of the TikTok app in Hong Kong."
The move has been taken to avoid sharing users' data with the government. To recall, TikTok has made the claims in the past that it neither shares users' data with the Chinese government nor stores the data in the country.
This is followed by some criticism for the popular app as has been accused of censoring users' content and stealing users data, thus, arising privacy and security concerns. In its defence, TikTok has said that it doesn't follow China's rules and does no harm to the users.
The decision to not share users' data with Hong Kong has also been taken by other tech companies such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Google and more. With TikTok exiting the Hong Kong market soon, others could follow too.
To recall, TikTok has recently been banned in India along with over 50 other Chinese apps as they posed a threat to the security and privacy of the users in the country. This could be another reason TikTok aims to clear its image by not abiding by China.
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