TikTok has said it will quit the Hong Kong market after China imposed a new security law on the city. In an interview, a spokesman for TikTok said they have decided to stop operations of the app in Hong Kong in light of recent events.
According to reports the company’s exit from the city will come within days.
The short-form video app was launched by China-based ByteDance for users outside mainland China as part of a strategy to grow its global audience. The tech company operates a similar short video sharing app in China called Douyin.
TikTok, now run by former Walt Disney executive Kevin Mayer, has said in the past that the app’s user data is not stored in China.
The company has also said previously that it would not comply with any Chinese government requests to censor content or give access to its users’ data, nor has it ever been asked to do so.
However, the controversial national security law in Hong Kong has given the city’s authorities new powers, raising concerns about data privacy.
The legislation punishes what China describes broadly as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with up to life in prison.
Critics say it erodes Hong Kong’s freedoms as a semi-autonomous region, including freedom of speech.
Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google and Telegram have all announced this week that they are also making changes to their operations in Hong Kong after the new security law came into force last week.
The tech firms have said they are not processing data requests from the Hong Kong police while they assess the ongoing political changes in the city.
HONGKONG defends the security law
On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam defended the national security law imposed by Beijing saying it was not “doom and gloom” for the city.
Ms Lam said the law would restore Hong Kong’s status as one of the safest cities in the world after pro-democracy protests last year often turned violent.
She also said compared with the national security laws of other countries,this law is a rather mild one saying its scope is not as broad as that in other countries and even China.
The legislation has been heavily criticised globally for undermining freedoms guaranteed under the “one country, two systems” agreed as part of the former British colony’s return to Chinese rule in 1997.
Also on Tuesday US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US is looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok.
About TikTok
TikTok known as Douyin in China is a Chinese video sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing based internet technology company founded in 2012 by Zheng Yiming. It is used to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy and talent videos. ByteDance first launched Douyin for the China market in September 2016. Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Andriod in most markets outside of China; however, it only became available in the United States after merging with Musical.ly on 2 August 2018. TikTok and Douyin are similar to each other, but run on separate servers and have different content to comply with Chinese Censorship restrictions. The application allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds.