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Miguel Cordon · · 1 min readByteDance to cut its India staff as TikTok ban continues
The move comes after it was reported that India has decided to retain its ban on ByteDance’s short-video app TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps, amid compliance and privacy concerns.
“We initially hoped that this situation would be short-lived […] we find that has not been the case,” the internal memo read, a copy of which has been seen by Reuters. “We simply cannot responsibly stay fully staffed while our apps remain nonoperational […] we don’t know when we will make a comeback in India.”
India’s bans came as tensions between the country and China continue to rise after a border clash last year. In addition to TikTok, Tencent Holdings’ WeChat and Alibaba’s UC Browser were said to be affected.
The first wave of bans came in June of last year. Another 118 were added to the list in September 2020, while another ban wave involving 43 apps came in November.
Other blocked apps include AliExpress, Taobao Live, Baidu, and Alipay, as well as the games PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite.
Editing by Collin Furtado and September Grace Mahino
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