TikTok CEO seeks to reassure on EU rules on privacy, child safety

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, Jan 10 (Reuters) – TikTok Chief Executive Shou
Zi Chew on a visit to Brussels on Tuesday sought to reassure the
European Union the app would respect the bloc’s increasingly
stringent tech rules and commitments to privacy and child
safety.

The short-video app, which is owned by Chinese technology
conglomerate ByteDance, has for the last three years worked to
counter U.S. concerns over whether the personal data of its
citizens can be accessed and its content manipulated by China’s
Communist Party or any other entity under Beijing’s influence.

Pressure on the company increased following its admission
last month that some of its employees improperly accessed TikTok
user data of two journalists to try to identify the source of
information leaks to the media.

Compared to rivals Meta and Twitter, TikTok has a
relatively low profile with regulators in the 27-country bloc.

But that could change as stringent tech rules to curb the
power of Big Tech and require online platforms to do more to
police the internet for illegal content go into force in the
coming months.

Chew’s series of meetings in Brussels began with EU
antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.

“The objective of the meeting with TikTok was to review how
the company is preparing for complying with its obligations
under the European Commission’s regulation, namely the Digital
Services Act (DSA) and possibly under the Digital Markets Act
(DMA),” the EU executive said in a statement.

“At the meeting the parties also discussed GDPR (General
Data Protection Regulation) and matters of privacy and data
transfer obligations with a reference to the recent press
reporting on aggressive data harvesting and surveillance in the
U.S,” it said.

Values and Transparency Commissioner Vera Jourova listed her
concerns to Chew, among them the protection of Europeans’
personal data, child safety and the spread of Russian
disinformation on the platform as well as the transparency of
political advertising.

“I count on TikTok to fully execute its commitments to go
the extra mile in respecting EU law and regaining trust of
European regulators,” she said in a statement after the meeting.

EU justice chief Didier Reynders told Chew that TikTok could
do more to remove hate content on its platform.

Tiktok said it was committed to complying with EU rules in a
transparent way.

“It’s a top priority for us to be ready for this,” its
vice-president for public policy, Europe, Theo Bertram, said in
a tweet.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and
Barbara Lewis)