By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew and the EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager discussed on Tuesday “aggressive” data harvesting and surveillance in the United States, the European Commission said.
The short-video app, which is owned by Chinese technology conglomerate ByteDance, last month admitted 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.
The company has for the last three years sought to reassure Washington that the personal data of U.S. citizens cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China’s Communist Party or any other entity under Beijing’s influence.
In the European Union, TikTok together with numerous companies face new stringent tech rules that will go into force in the next two years requiring online platforms to do more to police the internet for illegal content.
“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.
Chew is scheduled to meet Values and Transparency Commissioner Vera Jourova and Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson after Vestager. TikTok did not have any immediate comment.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
