Another government joins the TikTok ban on official devices: Belgium

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced on Friday that his government had decided to ban the TikTok video application from official Belgian mobile phones for an initial period of six months. public workers.

In this way, Belgium has become the latest European government to take restrictive measures against TikTok due to concerns about the cure with the privacy of user data.

“we are not naive: TikTok is a Chinese company, which is obliged to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services. It’s reality,” De Croo said as he announced the move against the video-sharing app.

The Belgian decision, however, does not affect individual mobile devices civil servants or legislators.

The European Council (representing countries in the European Union, EU) and the European Commission (the executive arm of the EU) have already instructed their employees to remove the TikTok app from professional devices.

TikTok’s parent company, the Chinese company ByteDance, is under close scrutiny in Western countries because it suspects that Chinese authorities may have access to your data.

In 2022, the US banned the app from federal government devices, and some US lawmakers are trying to ban TikTok from operating across the country.

In November, TikTok admitted that some employees in China had access to the European user data.

However, the company has launched a huge effort to calm concerns and demonstrate that it has undertaken reforms to ensure the privacy of its users.

Ban in the United States

By consensus, i.e. without the need to submit the project to a vote, the US Senate approved this Wednesday the ban on the TikTok application on the official devices of federal government employees. In any case, the new norm has yet to be approved in the House of Representatives to become law.

The decision comes after several lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, suggested that data collected by the popular short-video app could end up in the hands of the Chinese government.

The rule approved today by the upper house would prevent the download of the application on any device used for business purposes by federal government officials.

A few years ago, as part of his strategy to increase pressure on China, the then US president, Donald Trump, gave TikTok an ultimatum transferring its operations to US companies if it didn’t want to be banned in the country.

However, this did not happen and today the application continues to be owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which has ensured on several occasions that it does not share its users’ data with the authority of the Asian country.

TikTok has more than 100 million users in the United States and has quickly become one of the most popular social networks in the world, especially among teenagers.

A spokesman for the Chinese-origin social network said that “it is worrying that, instead of encouraging the government to conclude the national security review of Tik Tok, some members of Congress have decided to promote a ban issued by political motivationswhich will do nothing for the national security of the United States”.

“Tik Tok is loved by millions of Americans who use the platform to learn, grow in their businesses, and connect with creative content that brings joy,” he said, referring to the bipartisan bill announced by Senator Marco Rubio.