The TikTok social network will store the more than 150 million data of its European users in three points of the European Union until the end of 2024, when the transfer process from the current servers would have finished.
This was stated by the head of Government Relations and Public Policies of the Chinese social network, Tim Klaws, in an interview with the Austrian agency APA.
“We are about to start migrating user data in Europe from servers in the US, Singapore and Malaysia to three data centers in Europe: two in Ireland and one in Norway,” Klaws said. “Of course, the new user data will be stored on the (European) servers beforehand,” she specified.
It is also planned to entrust a European entity with the verification of access to the data and the firewall of the short video platform.
TikTok estimates that this plan, dubbed “Project Clover”, will require annual investments of more than one billion euros and with it aims to dispel accusations that it does not sufficiently protect users’ private data.
Klaws also rejected the accusations that TikTok facilitates espionage activities by China, noting that the social network has 40,000 workers in the area of ”trust and security.”
Both the European Commission and several governments of Western countries have prohibited their employees from using the Tiktok application on service mobile phones.
TikTok has also been accused of censoring free speech to Beijing’s liking, something Klaws disputed, attributing the “false accusations” to the network’s strict content filters.
“We are even stricter in moderation than our competitors. There can be an excess of restraint and content that perhaps should not be removed is removed,” said the manager.