TikTok’s chief government will maintain talks with prime EU officers in Brussels on Tuesday because the West steps up its scrutiny of the Chinese-owned social media large.
Shou Zi Chew will meet EU vice-presidents Margrethe Vestager and Vera Jourova, the bloc’s dwelling affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson and justice commissioner Didier Reynders.
On the agenda shall be points like privateness, content material regulation and little one security on-line.
TikTok, whose mother or father firm ByteDance is Chinese, is beneath strain on each side of the Atlantic, because the West critiques its relations with Beijing on a number of fronts.
Some US lawmakers wish to cease TikTok working within the United States and final month Washington banned the video-sharing app from federal authorities gadgets, as fears develop about US residents’ information within the arms of China.
ByteDance is already beneath investigation by the Irish privateness regulator, the DPC, over whether or not it violated the EU’s large information safety regulation, the GDPR, in the best way it processed youngsters’s private information and over transfers of information to China.
The DPC has submitted a draft resolution within the investigation on youngsters’s information to related supervisory authorities. In November, TikTok admitted some employees in China can entry the information of European customers.
ByteDance additionally got here beneath heavy criticism final yr after it was revealed it spied on journalists from varied media shops together with Bloomberg.
The firm strenuously denies the Chinese authorities has any management over TikTok.
The EU is constructing a formidable authorized arsenal in opposition to expertise firms, passing two main legal guidelines to make sure social media platforms comply with the bloc’s guidelines.
Chew’s go to comes after the Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes stricter on-line regulation, got here into impact in November.
The DSA forces social media platforms, on-line marketplaces and search engines like google to react extra shortly to take away content material deemed in breach of EU rules.
Vestager’s spokeswoman stated the assembly was a part of many with social media platforms and expertise firms, and that TikTok requested the talks.
The bloc’s prime official for imposing digital regulation, Thierry Breton, will maintain a video name with Chew on January 19 since he’s in Spain this week.
During a press convention in Madrid on Monday, Breton stated he would inform Chew “the same thing” he advised billionaire Twitter proprietor Elon Musk, to arrange “to apply all of our rules”.
A TikTok spokesperson stated the platform is “fully committed to implementing the DSA’s provisions and (has) been making key resources available from across the business to ensure our future compliance with the regulation”.
