TikTok pledges to respect the EU’s stringent tech rules and stick to privacy and child safety obligations.
TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew, on a visit to Brussels on Tuesday, aimed to reassure the European Union. That the app would appreciate the bloc’s increasingly stringent tech conventions and commitments to privacy and child protection.
The short-video app, owned by Chinese technology partnership ByteDance, has functioned to counter US concerns for the last three years. Over whether the personal data of its residents can be accessed and its content exploited by China’s Communist Party. Or any other commodity under Beijing’s influence.
Pressure on the company increased following its admission last month. Because some of its workers improperly accessed the TikTok user data of two journalists to pinpoint the source of information leaks to the media.
Because likening to rivals Meta and Twitter, TikTok has a relatively low profile with regulators in the 27-country bloc.
But that could vary as stringent tech rules curb the power of Big Tech. And need online platforms to do more to police the internet for illegal content to go into detail in the coming months.
TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew’s visit to Brussels
Chew’s meetings in Brussels started with EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.
“The meeting with TikTok examined how the company is preparing to comply with its commitments under the European Commission’s regulation. But namely the Digital Services Act (DSA) and perhaps under the Digital Markets Act (DMA),” the EU executive said in a statement.
“At the meeting, the parties also concerned GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and privacy matters. And data transfer commitments concerning the recent press reporting on aggressive data harvesting and management in the US,” it said.
Values and Transparency Commissioner Vera Jourova listed her references to Chew. Among them are the security of European data, child protection, and the spread of Russian disinformation on the platform. And the clearness of political advertising.
“I rely on TikTok to fully execute its obligations and go the extra mile respecting EU law. And recovering the trust of European regulators,” she stated in a statement after the meeting.
Because EU justice chief Didier Reynders described Chew that TikTok could do more to withdraw hate content on its platform.
Tiktok stated it was dedicated to transparently complying with EU rules.
“It’s a leading priority for us to be ready for this,” its vice-president for public policy, Europe, Theo Bertram, expressed in a tweet.
