Description: Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined the Chinese social media giant TikTok, $600 million for breaching several GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) requirements. TikTok was accused of sending private customer data from European users to Chinese – based servers which was in breach of EU flagship data protection rules. TikTok has its headquarters in Ireland which makes the DPC the primary regulatory body assigned to monitor regulatory compliance. The fine was the third largest amongst EU regulators while TikTok was also warned of being in violation of data protection rules between 2020 and 2022 when the company was initially accused of enabling the Chinese government direct access to private consumer information. TikTok is currently involved in a $12.8 billion data center project, named Clover, which would see all of TikTok’s EU data centers store information within EU digital compliance and privacy requirements. TikTok also faces a permanent ban in the US where the same accusations are forcing their parent company ByteDance to divest their share to a US – based company on the US market.
Impact: Social media platforms have always been weaponized and state sponsored for various purposes which are mostly in correlation with activities conducted by intelligence agencies. TikTok has been largely used by the Chinese government in the covert war against the EU and the US as the app remains among the world’s largest social media platforms. The violation only emphasizes the unlimited access to vast portions of publicly available information and its incorporation in China’s global power aspirations. Since the platform is part of a global network of users, countries are adopting strategies to limit TikTok’s access to personal information and mostly divert the storage of that information from Chinese to servers pertaining to the country where the app is active. China would continue expanding its influence through the application as no comprehensive strategy against the misuse of the application for disinformation and influence operations is presented. EU and the US are in no position to impose additional regulatory requirements as large portions of the profits from social media activities depend on TikTok as one of the largest global social media platforms, which in return incites the need for readapting strategies in order to limit Chinese influence operations across the globe.