TikTok nicely hope this overview is correct.
The platform offered an replace on its “Undertaking Clover” knowledge sharing scheme, which goals to make sure that European person knowledge shouldn’t be being accessed by China-based staff and officers.
That mentioned, it’s now largely efficient.
In keeping with TikTok:
“As a part of our industry-leading initiative Undertaking Clover, TikTok is constructing extra safety round our European person knowledge that features safety gateways to additional prohibit entry. We will now announce that the gateways that relate to worker entry to knowledge and knowledge transmission are up and working. These gateways are designed to implement technical protocols in order that solely licensed staff can entry sure knowledge varieties. Since final summer season, for instance, new safety protocols have been developed to make sure that restricted knowledge saved in our new European knowledge enclave, akin to private movies and cellphone numbers, can’t be accessed by staff primarily based in China.”
So on the content material entrance, it covers non-public movies, that are a minority of TikTok uploads. However what about public posts?
“We’re additionally implementing applied sciences akin to anonymization to de-identify licensed knowledge varieties earlier than they’re accessed by China-based staff. It is knowledge, akin to public movies or person privateness settings, that should circulate internationally for our app to work and for our 150 million European customers to take part within the international TikTok group.”
As such, China-based TikTok employees, or staff of dad or mum firm ByteDance, are nonetheless capable of entry European TikTok person knowledge, and it appears to be like like a lot of it, however that info can be obscured by new processes to make sure person private knowledge. Not shared once more in China.
Which is ostensibly in step with EU knowledge laws, but it surely additionally probably misses a key level, in that TikTok might not essentially be used as an information assortment device, however extra of a propaganda platform, the place pro-China messages will be despatched to Western customers. .
Which continues to be a controversial ingredient, and there’s no concrete proof to recommend that ByteDance is manipulating person feeds in any method to promote or disprove sure narratives. However with ongoing China-based influencer operations seemingly making an attempt to do the identical to different main social apps, maybe TikTok could possibly be a vector for that, and primarily based on this temporary, Undertaking Clover will not essentially shield in opposition to that.
Nonetheless, it is in step with EU officers’ expectations, whereas TikTok additionally notes that cybersecurity agency NCC Group has inspected its code, and can proceed to re-examine future code updates over time.
TikTok additionally says it’s constructing three new knowledge facilities in Europe to accommodate EU person knowledge, two of which (Eire and Norway) are already energetic, with the remainder coming on-line subsequent yr.
So, in a broader sense, TikTok is making a safer atmosphere for managing EU person knowledge, individually from its Chinese language dad or mum firm, to satisfy EU necessities and keep away from potential sell-off shocks within the area, just like ours.
However there’s an argument that TikTok’s hypothetical risk stays, particularly when you think about that EU cyber safety officers have expressed concern about Chinese language affect exercise within the lead-up to their elections, significantly earlier this yr.
So whereas Undertaking Clover might attempt to deal with key knowledge sharing components, I doubt it would alleviate all of the issues related to the app.
And if TikTok does ultimately transfer out of the US, I believe there can be elevated stress for different areas to observe swimsuit.