TikTok had higher hope that this overview is appropriate.

The platform has supplied an replace on its “Venture Clover” knowledge separation venture, which goals to make sure that European person knowledge shouldn’t be being accessed by China-based workers and officers.

Which it says is now largely in impact.

As per TikTok:

“As a part of our industry-leading initiative Venture Clover, TikTok has been constructing extra protections round our European person knowledge that incorporate safety gateways to additional prohibit entry. We are able to now announce that the gateways that relate to worker entry to knowledge and knowledge transmission have been launched and are functioning. These gateways are designed to implement technical protocols in order that solely authorized workers can entry sure knowledge sorts. Since final summer time, for instance, new safety protocols have been in place designed to make sure that restricted knowledge saved in our new European knowledge enclave, corresponding to non-public movies and cellphone numbers, can’t be accessed by workers primarily based in China.”

So on the content material entrance, that covers non-public movies, that are the minority of TikTok uploads. However what about public posts?

“We’re additionally making use of applied sciences corresponding to pseudonymisation to de-identify allowable knowledge sorts earlier than they are often accessed by China-based workers. That is knowledge, corresponding to public movies or a person’s privateness settings, that should movement internationally for our app to operate and for our 150 million European customers to take part within the world TikTok neighborhood.”

As such, China-based TikTok workers, or workers from mum or dad firm ByteDance, are nonetheless capable of entry European TikTok person knowledge, and it looks as if numerous it, however that information might be obscured by new processes to make sure that particular person person knowledge shouldn’t be re-shared again to China.

Which is seemingly according to EU knowledge rules, however it additionally probably misses a key level, in that TikTok might not essentially be used as a knowledge gathering device, however extra a propaganda platform, the place pro-China messaging could be seeded to Western customers.

Which continues to be a contentious factor, and there’s no definitive proof to counsel that ByteDance is manipulating person feeds in any approach to promote or quash sure narratives. However provided that ongoing China-based affect operations try to do that in different large social apps, it appears doubtless that TikTok might be a vector for a similar, and Venture Clover received’t essentially shield in opposition to such, primarily based on this overview.

However, it’s according to the expectations of EU officers, 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 that 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 remaining heart to come back on-line subsequent 12 months.

So, in a broader sense, TikTok is making a safer atmosphere for managing EU person knowledge, in isolation from its Chinese language mum or dad firm, in an effort to meet EU necessities, and keep away from a possible sell-off push within the area, just like the U.S.

However there may be an argument to be made that the speculative risk of TikTok stays, notably while you additionally think about that EU cybersecurity officers particularly raised considerations about Chinese language affect exercise within the lead-up to their polls earlier this 12 months.

So whereas Venture Clover might search to deal with the important thing knowledge sharing components, I doubt it’s going to quell all of the considerations linked to the app.   

And if TikTok is finally faraway from the U.S., I think that there might be enhanced strain for different areas to comply with swimsuit.