The European Parliament has told staff to purge TikTok from devices used for work because of data protection concerns, after similar moves by the EU's main governing bodies last week. The move follows scores of countries worldwide that have restricted use of the social media app.
The president of the EU Parliament, Roberta Metsola, wrote in an email sent to some 8,000 EP staffers that TikTok should not be used or installed on staff devices such as mobile phones, tablets or laptops as of 20 March.
The note, sent on Tuesday, said that "cybersecurity concerns have been raised on the usage of the social media platform TikTok, in particular regarding data protection and collection of data by third parties".
It also "strongly recommended" that MEPs and their staff remove TikTok from their personal devices.
TikTok is now banned in European Commission, EU Council, European External Action Service and European Parliament. It laments that the EU didn’t give it a chance to defend itself prior to the ban https://t.co/mYUaqIE80L
— Stuart Lau (@StuartKLau) February 28, 2023
Ultrashort videos
The European Parliament is far from the first to ban TikTok, but, like other institutions, its members were initially happy to tap into the app's popularity among its estimated 1 billion members worldwide.
Tiktok was first released in 2015 by ByteDance, a Chinese company based in Beijing but registered in the Cayman Islands. CEO is billionaire Zhang Yiming, whose wealth stands at $55 billion according to Bloomberg. ByteDance was initially supported by US venture capital company Sequoia Capital for $100 million.
Zhang, a software developer, created TikTok and later merged it with Musica.ly, a company based in California but originally created in Shanghai, which had created an app where users could create 15-second to 1-minute lip-syncing music videos.
Its ability for users to create ultrashort videos linked with a targeted AI-based search engine turned the app into one of the world's most popular social media.
But official resentment against the app started early, especially in places which have geopolitical issues with China.
Strongest critics were India and Taiwan, where security concerns encouraged authorities to ban the app completely. India is engaged in a slow-burning conflict with China, while Taiwan is seen by Beijing as a renegade province that may be invaded one day.
'Digital generation killer'
The US launched a national security review of the app in 2019 but Indian authorities were the first to impose an outright ban on TikTok (and 58 other Chinese apps) in June 2020.
Indian Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar called the app a "digital generation killer."
Meanwhile French President Emmanuel Macron recently accused TikTok of censoring content and encouraging online addiction among young people.
"This network is deceptively innocent," he was quoted by French daily newspaper Le Monde as saying, adding that "behind this, there's a real addiction".
Other countries, including EU member states, Japan and Canada, but also Pakistan and Afghanistan issued similar concerns.
But for most countries the real reason to censor to app was born from suspicion that TikTok software is able to siphon off information from the cellphones it was installed up and providing it to Chinese spy agencies.
On August 10, 2020, the US Congress issued the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which was finally passed in December last year. On 27 February, the White House gave all federal agencies 30 days to remove TikTok from all government devices.
TikTok is also accused of spreading fake news and "communist propaganda."
On 6 December, an investigation by the Australian Financial Review found that "the Chinese Communist Party is paying online influencers and production companies as much as $620,000 to create propaganda and counter global efforts to expose human rights abuses against the Uighur people in Xinjiang".
Transparency centre
Meanwhile, the Malcore team at Internet 2.0, a cyber security watchdog, says in a report published in August last year that TikTok software "has the capability to inject potentially malicious JavaScript into third party websites" while possibly collecting user device serial numbers, information from accounts, GPS data and content.
TikTok angrily reacted to the allegations in a press release, rejecting the allegations and pointing at the company's "Transparency Centre," but suspicions were not eased.
The latest blow to TikTok with the European Parliament's ban was preceded by the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, and the European Council, which represents 27 EU member states, censoring the app.
Individual EU member states now also start to look into restricting TikTok.
In Europe, Denmark's parliament announced Tuesday it had asked MPs and all staff to remove the app from mobile devices because of the "risk of spying".
TikTok did not immediately comment on the latest parliament ban but last week insisted it "protects the data of its 125 million monthly users in the European Union".
