Public authorities in the Netherlands are being told to steer clear of TikTok amid growing concerns across the EU and U.S. that the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform poses privacy risks.
Dutch ministries and agencies are mostly following a recommendation to shun TikTok accounts and stop government communication and advertising on the platform, two government officials told POLITICO. This is despite the app’s skyrocketing popularity in the Netherlands, where it has around 3.5 million users.
The Dutch pivot away from TikTok follows advice issued by the general affairs ministry to “suspend the use of TikTok for the government until TikTok has adjusted its data protection policy” announced in November. While the recommendation resembles a recent U.S. government decision from December to ban the use of TikTok on government devices, the Dutch guidance is far more limited in scope and enforcement.
The Dutch policy on TikTok, which is effectively a pause rather than a ban, is mainly targeted at stopping the use of TikTok for “media” purposes, a spokesperson for the general affairs ministry said, and doesn’t explicitly instruct government officials to delete the app from phones.
TikTok admitted in early November that some of its China-based employees could access European TikTok user data. It also came under intense scrutiny in the U.S. over a report in Forbes magazine in December that employees had accessed data to track the location of journalists covering TikTok.
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