TikTok plans second data centre for Ireland

Chinese social media company TikTok is at the advanced stage of planning a second data centre in Ireland with a third party service provider.

The short video-sharing app, owned by China’s ByteDance, is aiming to expand its European data storage, TikTok’s general manager for operations in Europe, Rich Waterworth, said in a blog post.

“We are at an advanced stage of finalising a plan for a second data centre in Ireland with a third party service provider, in addition to the site announced last year,” Mr Waterworth said.

“We’re also in talks to establish a third data centre in Europe to further complement our planned operations in Ireland. European TikTok user data will begin migrating this year, continuing into 2024,” he said.

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The company’s data centre expansion could mitigate concerns over the security of users’ data and ease regulatory pressure on the company.

[ TikTok base in Dublin’s south docklands on the market for €280m ]

[ Data centres now consuming more electricity than rural homes - CSO ]

TikTok has been seeking to assure governments and regulators that users' personal data cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China's Communist Party or anyone else under Beijing's influence.

The company on Friday also reported on average 125 million monthly active users in EU between August 2022 to January 2023, subjecting it to stricter EU online content rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA labels companies with more than 45 million users as very large online platforms and require them to do risk management, external and independent auditing, share data with authorities and researchers and adopt a code of conduct.

The European Commission had given online platforms and search engines until February 17th to publish their monthly active users. Very large online platforms have four months to comply with the rules or risk fines. – Reuters