TikTok Pulls Out of Hong Kong: TechCrunch

TikTok is the world’s most popular short video app, but politicians around the world express “concerns that it could be used by the Beijing government as a surveillance and propaganda tool,” explains Rita Liao for TechCrunch. India has banned TikTok, along with more than 50 other Chinese apps, and the United States may follow. TikTok announced plans to pull out of Hong Kong, where China has imposed a strict national security law that strives to block any opposition to the central government and communist control. Liao suggests the company may launch a censored version of the app for Hong Kong, similar to the version used in China. “ByteDance, founded by Chinese serial entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, has been working to disassociate TikTok from its Chinese ownership and Beijing censorship,” she writes. “Efforts have ranged from keeping an overseas data center for TikTok that’s supposedly out of reach by the Chinese authority, giving outside experts a glimpse into its moderation process, through to hiring Disney’s Kevin Mayer as the app’s new global face.” Other major tech companies including Twitter and Google announced plans to discontinue data review requests from the Hong Kong government. – YaleGlobal