TikTok's chief executive officer will hold talks with top European Union officials in Brussels on Tuesday as the West steps up its scrutiny of the Chinese-owned social media giant.
Shou Zi Chew will meet E.U. vice-presidents Margrethe Vestager and Vera Jourova, the bloc's home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson and justice commissioner Didier Reynders.
On the agenda will be issues like privacy, content regulation and child safety online.
"I think it is very important that they keep a close eye on what their children are doing online. Because we know that the protection of these types of platforms is not perfect at the moment. I would say, make sure that your children do not have access to videos that you don't want them to see," Alexandra van Huffelen, the state secretary handling digitalization issues in the Netherlands, said late last year.
Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA), which will gradually take effect over the next two years, requires platforms with over 45 million E.U. users to do a better job of content moderation, keep harmful content out of sight, take down illegal content, and implement age ratings and restrictions, Van Huffelen noted.
TikTok’s parent ByteDance is already under investigation by the Irish privacy regulator, the DPC, over whether it violated the E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation in the way it processed children's personal data and over transfers of data to China.
The DPC has submitted a draft decision in the investigation on children's data to relevant supervisory authorities. In November, TikTok admitted some staff in China can access the data of European users, but denies the Chinese government has any control over TikTok.
A TikTok spokesperson said the platform is "fully committed to implementing the DSA's provisions".
(Source: AFP)
