This project which was announced on Wednesday is aimed at strengthening existing protection on user’s data and might perhaps quell political pressure the platform has faced recently.
These new policies will be implemented later in 2023 and into 2024.
According to the press release by TikTok’s vice president of government relations in Europe, Theo Bertram said “Over 150 million people across Europe come to our platform every month to express themselves, learn new hobbies or skills and grow their business,”.
He added that “With such scale comes significant responsibility — building trust by ensuring the safety, privacy and security of our community and their data is critical.”
While TikTok disclosed that “Project Clover” will strengthen the data security measures by implementing “security gateways that will determine employee access to European TikTok user data and data transfers outside of Europe.”
However, the gateways will be overseen by a third-party security company inEurope, more details on the independent verification system will be disclosed.
TikTok also indicated that it will be placing more emphasis on local data storage which includes opening two new data centers in Ireland and Norway to add to its existing data center in Ireland, with the operational cost of the centers now over $1.2 billion each year.
TikTok, which has come under recent backlash from the west over security concerns, as most officials expressed mistrust about the platform and because of its Chinese parent company. The European Parliament, European Commission and the EU Council have all imposed bans recently on TikTok on staff devices, and its has also been banned on U,S government agencies.
While in the U.S, lawmakers are considering a bill to ban the platform in the U.S
