According to BBC and CNBC, Tik Tok is halting its operation in Hong Kong. The Chinese video-sharing app has decided to voluntarily withdraw from the Hong Kong market within days.
A spokesman for TikTok told the BBC, “Considering the recent series of events, we have decided to stop operating the app in Hong Kong.”
The spokesman did not elaborate on “the series of events”. But
it is might be an expression to address the Hong Kong Security Law. The law has meant to punish anti-Chinese activists in Hong Kong.
The decision came as so-called big IT companies, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, said they would not respond to requests from Hong Kong authorities to provide user information. On the other hand, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeii said in an interview with Fox News on the 6th, “We are considering banning the use of Chinese social media apps such as TikTok.”
TikTok has stressed that it has a separate operating system from Byte Dance. And that all data centers are outside China, which is not subject to Chinese law.
Tik Tok: Not a great loss from Hong Kong withdrawal
Even if TikTok withdraws from Hong Kong, operating losses will not be significant. TikTok said it had 150,000 users in Hong Kong as of August last year.
TikTok operates under Byte Dance, an IT company based in China, and has continued to grow since 2017 by targeting overseas markets. According to global research firm Sensor Tower statistics, TikTok topped its competitors Facebook and Instagram with 315 million downloads of Google and Apple’s app stores in the first quarter of this year.
As one of the most popular app in the world, Tik Tok has received many critics. Many countries in the world including the U.S., India and South Korea had tried to ban the app. Under the suspicion of personal data leak from its users.