The TikTok social network is having a bad time. Not so much in its ever-growing user numbers. This is the regulation that is activated on both sides of the Atlantic. Back to a complicated week for the Chinese social network which seeks to reassure.
With more than a billion active users worldwide, TikTok is the sixth most used social platform, according to We Are Social’s latest digital evolution report, published in January. Europe is TikTok’s biggest market with 150 million users, including 25 million in the UK. Globally, the application claims more than a billion users.
TikTok acknowledged in November that some employees in China could access European user data, and admitted in December that employees had used that data to stalk journalists. But the group denies any Chinese government control or access to its data.
Prohibition of use for US federal agencies
It was the White House that opened the ball on February 28. U.S. federal agencies will have to clear their devices of the TikTok video app within 30 days, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ordered on Monday. Owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok has been targeted by US lawmakers who consider the application a threat to national security, and had banned its use on civil servants’ devices in a law passed in late December.
The OMB’s order is taken pursuant to this law, ratified in early January by President Joe Biden. In a memorandum, the director of this office, Shalanda Young, called on government agencies to “remove and prohibit installations” of the application on devices owned or managed by them, and to “prohibit internet traffic ” from these devices to the application. The ultra-popular short and viral video platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is increasingly scrutinized by Westerners who fear that Beijing could thus access the data of users around the world. This ban in the US federal government comes days after a similar decision by the European Commission, which banned TikTok from its staff to “protect” the institution.
The European Parliament will ban TikTok
The European Parliament has in turn decided to ban TikTok, a Chinese application for sharing short videos, on the professional phones of its employees for security reasons, we learned on Tuesday February 28 from an official of the EU.
This ban will also apply to the personal mobile devices of these employees on which access to Parliament’s emails and other network access are installed, said the official, adding that this decision should be announced soon.
The European Commission and the European Council already announced last week a ban on TikTok on the phones of their staff, for fear that the Chinese authorities could use this application belonging to the ByteDance group to harvest user data and promote their interests. .
China denies having such intentions. Restrictions on the use of TikTok have also been decided in the United States, Canada and India.
Danish parliament asks MPs and staff to uninstall TikTok
The Danish Parliament announced on Tuesday that it had asked MPs and all of its staff to ban the TikTok application from the mobile devices it provides because of the “risk of espionage”.
The announcement follows recommendations from the Danish Cybersecurity Center urging civil servants to remove TikTok from their phones after the European Commission banned the app on work devices to “protect” the institution.
The ultra-popular video platform, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is increasingly scrutinized by Westerners who fear that Beijing could thus access the data of users around the world. The Government of Canada also announced on Monday that it will ban TikTok from the mobile devices it provides to its staff starting Tuesday, citing “an unacceptable level of risk” to privacy and security. TikTok has already been among the Chinese apps banned in India since 2020.
Compulsory parental consent in France for children under 15
The National Assembly voted Thursday the obligation for social networks like TikTok or Snapchat to verify the agreement of parents for the registration of children under 15, one of the links in a series of initiatives aimed at supervising children’s digital uses.
The bill, carried by the boss of the Horizons deputies Laurent Marcangeli, was adopted almost unanimously (82 votes against 2) at first reading, in an atmosphere of harmony that has become rare at the Palais Bourbon. It must now be considered in the Senate. Rejecting any “moralizing discourse”, Mr. Marcangeli defended “essential safeguards” to be put in the face of “the growing precocity of digital puberty and the power of the tools made available to our young people”.
Pornography, cyberbullying, unattainable standards of beauty or even addictive processes to capture attention: during the debates, the deputies agreed on the list of risks against which the youngest had to be protected.
TikTok claims to be looking for a “partner” in Europe to reassure on data security
Faced with mistrust from European public authorities, TikTok is looking for a “partner” to guarantee that its users’ data is not transferred to China, on the model of the measures taken in the United States, one of the executives announced on Friday. from the social network to AFP.
“Western governments have real concerns about China, and therefore as a Chinese-founded company we have a greater responsibility to show how we secure our users’ data,” said Theo Bertram, vice president. -president in charge of public policies in Europe.
The hugely popular video app, owned by giant ByteDance, is seeking to pledge after the European Commission’s decision to ban the app from its staff’s work devices, citing data security concerns. Since then, similar measures have notably been taken by the European Parliament and the Danish Parliament, while France is considering a ban for its civil servants.
In the EU, ByteDance is also under investigation by the Irish Privacy Authority, which suspects it of breaching EU data protection law (GDPR) regarding data processing. children’s personal information and data transfers to China.
TikTok therefore wishes to replicate the model implemented in the United States with the Californian company Oracle, responsible since the summer of 2022 for hosting user data in the country and auditing its algorithms. “All of our code is visible to Oracle. We can’t update without going through them,” Bertram said.
If the project, which has already cost the app $1.5 billion, is approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), “Oracle will send updates to the TikTok app directly” on mobile phone application stores, a “protection” which will also benefit Europeans because the application “will be the same”, he specified.
“To really convince public opinion, we have to do the same in Europe,” said Theo Bertram. “We are working to create three new data centers and we will also work with a partner,” he added, without giving further details at this stage.
(With AFP and Reuters)
