TikTok Plans To Open Two Data Centers In Europe, To Improve User Data Security

TikTok, plans to open two additional data centers in Europe. (photo: twitter @tiktok_us)

Chinese social media company TikTok plans to open two additional data centers in Europe. This was revealed by a senior executive on Friday 17 February. The move is expected to reduce concerns regarding user data security and reduce regulatory pressure on the company.

TikTok has made efforts to reassure governments of various countries and regulators that users' personal data is inaccessible and its content cannot be manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party or anyone under Beijing's influence. This short video sharing app, owned by China's ByteDance, aims to expand its European data storage.

"We are in the advanced stages of formulating plans for the second time in Ireland with third-party service providers, apart from the website announced last year," Rich Waterworth, general manager of TikTok for operations in Europe, said in a blog post quoted by Reuters.

"We are also in talks to set up a third data center in Europe to further complement plans in Ireland. European TikTok users' data will start migrating this year, continuing until 2024," Waterworth said.

The company also reported an average of 125 million monthly active users in the EU between August 2022 and January 2023, so that it was subject to stricter EU online content rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

DSA marks companies with more than 45 million users as online platforms as very large and demands that they perform risk management, external and independent audits, share data with authorities and researchers, and adopt code of ethics.

The European Commission gives February 17th for online platforms and search engines to publish monthly number of active users. The online platform is huge and has four months to comply with the rules or risk being fined.

Twitter on Thursday 16 February said it had 100.9 million monthly active users in the EU, based on its last 45-day forecast.

Alphabet Inc. provides a set of numbers based on user accounts and another set based on recipients who do not log in, saying that users can access their services both when logging into the account or when they don't log in.

The company says the average number of users entering per month is 278.6 million on Google Maps, 274.6 million on Google Play, 332 million on Google Search, 74.9 million on Shopping, and 401.7 million on YouTube.

Meta Platform (META.O) recently announced that Facebook's average monthly active user count in the European Union region has reached around 255 million, and Instagram has reached around 250 million monthly active users on average in the last six months of 2022. This number shows that Facebook and Instagram remain the popular social media platforms in Europe.

Meta Platform was previously known as Facebook, and the company has made brand changes in 2021. Since then, Meta has continued to invest in developing new technologies and products to improve user experience and expand its reach around the world.

With a monthly number of active users reaching hundreds of millions in Europe, Meta Platform is still a big player in the social media industry. This shows that many people in Europe still choose Facebook and Instagram as their favorite platforms to connect with friends and family, as well as consume social media content.

As social media usage worldwide continues to increase, Meta Platforms will continue to develop and improve their products and services to meet user needs and maintain their position as leaders in the industry.