Europe shrugs off Washington's TikTok fears – POLITICO

The EU has tools in its arsenal that the U.S. lacks, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which regulates how companies can collect, use and send data to other countries, and the DSA, which enables regulators like the European Commission to inspect online platforms’ algorithms during investigations.   

Even so, the Commission hasn’t yet opened a DSA investigation into potential Chinese interference in TikTok, despite analysis pointing to Beijing's use of the popular app in its influence operations. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence in March said that China's government had used TikTok to meddle in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. 

While the Commission has aimed DSA-empowered scrutiny at TikTok, that focus has largely been on the platform’s alleged inadequate efforts to protect teenagers from issues like addictive features and algorithms and inappropriate content. The Commission earlier this week, for example, opened a new investigation into TikTok over a rewards feature described by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton as potentially “addictive.”

Strong EU regulations — like the DSA and GDPR — safeguard Europeans' privacy and online safety "in a non-discriminatory way," said Commission spokesperson Johannes Bahrke. He added that online platforms like TikTok could be temporarily suspended as a last resort in case of serious infringements with the DSA.

TikTok’s main European data protection watchdog, the Irish Data Protection Commission, has also been investigating the company since 2021 for potentially unlawfully shipping users’ data to China. The first results of the probe, which were first expected in early 2023, have been postponed to the second quarter of 2024. Former Irish privacy chief Helen Dixon described the company as demanding more confidentially than Western firms. 

”We're not dealing with a democratic state that we're familiar with when we're dealing with China,” she told POLITICO in January.