The data of European users is safe. At least that's the message of the short video platform Tiktok. In a press conference on Wednesday, representatives of the platform presented the way Tiktok intends to deal with the data of European users in the future.

Gregor Brunner

Editor in business.

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The focus was on the three planned European data centres. The location Ireland for two of them was already known. A third is scheduled to operate in Norway from the fourth quarter of 2023. Tiktok estimates the maintenance costs of the data centers at 1.2 billion euros annually.

The data of European users should primarily be stored here. On the one hand, only superficial data such as the videos and the necessary information themselves should flow abroad; on the other hand, metadata, such as tags for private or public videos.

No damage to the business model

The advertising business should not be affected by the data protection measures. At least there is no direct damage. The additional costs of the data centers, however, would weigh on the revenues, said Theo Bertram, vice president of government relations at Tiktok. Something similar was recently said with regard to new youth protection measures.

In light of concerns that Tiktok shares data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Bertram reiterated the corporate structure of Bytedance, the operator of Tiktok. The headquarters of Bytedance is located in the Cayman Islands, previous data centers for TikTok are in the United States and Singapore.

(Hardly) Connections to China

Bytedance also has a subsidiary of the same name in China, which is responsible for the operation of the China-exclusive sister platform Douyin. It is true that a member of the Communist Party sits on its supervisory board. "However, this is the case in all subsidiaries of foreign companies in China," Bertram emphasized. The party or the Chinese government would not have access to the parent company's data or to the TikTok data centers.

Similar to "Project Texas", which includes the cooperation of Tiktok with the US government and the technology company Oracle, a cooperation between a local data security specialist and European authorities is to be set up. This independent partner is to supervise the data flows from Europe and check the source code of the platform for its security.

In the United States, Tiktok discloses changes to the platform's source code to the software company Oracle. Oracle reviews the changes and then consults with the U.S. government. One stands for such a model in Europe with a partner in exchange, but does not want to name this yet, it was said in the press conference.

Tiktok is currently enjoying a difficult position in the United States and the EU. Despite their efforts and assurances that no data would be shared with China, a bill is on the table in the United States that could allow a ban on the app. Meanwhile, the EU Commission has instructed its employees to delete the app from their work mobile phones.