More bad news for TikTok, with EU IT officials calling for Government employees to remove the app from their devices, citing security concerns.
As reported by Euractiv:
“The EU executive’s IT service has asked all Commission employees to uninstall TikTok from their corporate devices, as well as the personal devices using corporate apps, citing data protection concerns.”
It’s the first big move against TikTok in Europe, and follows similar warnings and actions taken in US states, where many regional governments have banned the app on official devices.
TikTok is also under investigation by the White House which could lead to a possible nationwide ban, with the FBI and the FCC both recommending the app be removed from US app stores due to concerns that the company could be sharing information on US citizens with the Chinese Government.
TikTok has repeatedly denied that it has, or will share information with the CCP, but an investigation late last year did uncover staff from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance using TikTok information to track contacts of US journalists.
Amid ongoing tensions with China, TikTok could be caught in the middle, and it seems inevitable that, at some stage, the US Government will need to make a call on the app, one way or another, that could see it banned or restricted in the US.
Adding Europe into the mix expands the concerns, and it logically follows that if the US bans TikTok, many other western nations will also follow suit, in line with security concerns.
TikTok’s still working on a deal to separate US user data from China, and if I had to bet, that does seem like that will be the more likely outcome, given the billions in potential revenue on the line. If the US moves to ban the app, ByteDance could look to sell TikTok to a US owner, as it did when former President Donald Trump sought to ban the app in 2020.
Will that appease EU concerns too? We’ll have to wait and see, but it does seem like TikTok’s day of reckoning is coming, sometime soon.
