TikTok Plans More Data Centres in Europe Amid Security Concerns

Chinese short-video company TikTok plans to set up two more data centres in Europe, a senior executive revealed on Friday.

The tech giant has been working on moves to reassure governments and regulators in the US and other western nations that user data cannot be accessed by the Communist Party.

Concerns about the security of users’ data have been a major issue in the United States.

The popular video-sharing app, owned by China’s ByteDance, aims to expand its data storage in Europe, TikTok’s general manager for operations in the region Rich Waterworth said in a blog post.

“We are at an advanced stage of finalising a plan for a second data centre in Ireland with a third party service provider, in addition to the site announced last year,” he said.

“We’re also in talks to establish a third data centre in Europe to further complement our planned operations in Ireland. European TikTok user data will begin migrating this year, continuing into 2024,” Waterworth said.

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Tech giants report EU user numbers

The company on Friday also reported on average 125 million monthly active users in EU between August 2022 to January 2023, subjecting it to stricter EU online content rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA labels companies with more than 45 million users as very large online platforms and require them to do risk management, external and independent auditing, share data with authorities and researchers and adopt a code of conduct.

The European Commission had given online platforms and search engines until February 17 to publish their monthly active users. Very large online platforms have four months to comply with the rules or risk fines.

Twitter on Thursday said it has 100.9 million average monthly users in the EU, based on an estimation of the last 45 days.

Alphabet provided one set of numbers based on users’ accounts and another set based on signed-out recipients, saying that users can access its services whether they sign into an account or when they are signed out.

It said the average monthly number of signed-in users totalled 278.6 million at Google Maps, 274.6 million at Google Play, 332 million at Google Search, 74.9 million at Shopping and 401.7 million at YouTube.

Earlier this week, Meta Platform said it had 255 million average monthly active users on Facebook in the EU and about 250 million average monthly active users on Instagram in the last six months of 2022.