Barely weeks after getting banned in India, TikTok on late Monday evening announced that it is exiting the Hong kong market. TikTok’s parent company Bytedance has been forced to take this tough decision in response to the tough security law that came into effect in Hong Kong since last week.
TikTok has said to Reuters that it will exit the Hong kong market and consequently the app will be unavailable on Google play store and Apple app store in the next one or two days.
TikTok’s exit from China’s semi-autonomous city has now brought a sharp focus on other major tech giants like Facebook, Apple, Google and Whatsapp. According to reports, these big American tech companies have so far refused to process the data’s of Hong Kong citizens, citing that they are still reviewing the new security law.
With new security law in the place that mandates sharing of consumer data with government agencies, experts are claiming that Chinese internet firewall has now finally arrived in Hong Kong. It should be noted that big tech giants like Facebook and Google don’t operate in Mainland China due to tough online censorship laws.
Apparently, it seems Hong kong too is moving in the same direction as Chinese government belligerently tries hard to quell the yearlong democratic movement in the semi-autonomous city.
Although Hong Kong is reportedly a small market and unprofitable for TikTok app, the fact that exit from Hongkong has come closely on the heels of getting banned in India will surely make things challenging for Bytedance.
India was among TikTok’s biggest overseas market, though its contribution to the company’s overall revenue and profit was pretty marginal. TikTok was among the 59 Chinese apps that was recently banned by the Indian government in response to the recent violent border clash between Chinese PLA soldiers and Indian soldiers.