TikTok users in Europe number more than 150 million. The Chinese company also reports that there are over 5 thousand employees on the old continent in 10 countries. The planned investments then also include a second data center in Ireland where the data of European users will migrate.
Two years later, in the U.S. at the center of the debate is still the “threat” TikTok, because of U.S.-China relations, precisely at this historical moment, not exactly idyllic, the Chinese app owned by ByteDance continues to invest in Europe. And this produces, among other results, a positive result in terms of the number of users using the short video platform.
TikTok, precisely because of the situation created in the United States, as we said, has continued to invest in the old continent to support a community that now has more than 150 million users, it was 100 million as of September 2020.
Globally, there are more than 1.5 billion users of TikTok, and 1 billion is the number of monthly active users. What’s more, nearly a quarter of social media users globally use TikTok, or 23 percent. Another figure that gives us the measure of the TikTok phenomenon globally is that more than 1 billion videos are viewed on the platform every day.
The Chinese company also dominates in Europe from the point of view of physical presence with more than 5 thousand people employed in 10 European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The company lets it be known that the investments go in the direction of providing the European community and its data with maximum protection and security, particularly with regard to new regulations. Last week, TikTok presented its first benchmark report in accordance with the Enhanced Code of Best Practices on Disinformation, which provides more than 2,500 data points on the implementation and enforcement of TikTok’s policies in 30 different European countries. In addition, a specific plan is underway to ensure future compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
Transparency and security are the key elements driving TikTok’s investments: the opening of the European Transparency and Accountability Centre office in Dublin is planned for March, while the publication of quarterly Community Guidelines enforcement reports continues, in which the company provides detailed information on the nature of content and accounts removed from the platform.
To extend data storage capacity in Europe, a plan to establish a second data center in Ireland is in advanced stages of finalization, and negotiations are underway to develop a third data center in Europe. European user data will begin migrating to the new data centers this year and continue into 2024.
Finally, as part of the journey of building trust with the community, TikTok continues to implement the data governance strategy outlined for Europe last year that includes further limiting employee access to European user data, as well as minimizing data flows outside of Europe and keeping European user data on-site.