All those efforts aren’t necessarily helping, though. When asked about it by Fox News, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the US is “certainly looking at” banning Chinese social media apps like TikTok. In addition, the US Senate recently asked intelligence services to probe TikTok to see if it presents any kind of a national security risk. TikTok was recently banned in India, along with dozens of other Chinese apps.

Facebook recently said it would “pause” responses to data requests from Hong Kong, despite the new security law that gives police the power to order companies to remove content. However, Apple, which still has a large presence in China, complied last year with communist government demands to remove a Hong Kong protest-tracking app.

ByteDance has continued to try to distance itself from China and by exiting Hong Kong now, is avoiding the appearance of any potential conflicts. TikTok previously said that it has 150,000 users in the city and a source told Reuters that it’s a money-losing region for the company.