In other words, it still struggles to assuage the European regulators as to how safe the users' data of EU-based users would be while creating new data centers in Europe.

And on that front, today TikTok brought in a fresh update on the progress made regarding "Project Clover, which is its EU-user-data separation project.

"As noted by TikTok":

"The first building in our Norwegian data center is now operational and migration of European user data from the US has begun. This is the second of our European data centers to come online, with our first data center in Ireland coming online last year.".

Last September, TikTok's first European data centre was activated in Dublin, marking the initial step in the company's plan to segregate user data from the European Union, ensuring that the company's Chinese staff will not be sifting through it. However, last July, the firm said its staff based in China could view information on the content posted by users in publicly and other pieces of information regarding the EU users.

It is also using "pseudonymisation" elements, which essentially masks EU user info when accessed by Chinese staff. But it will still be accessible. According to TikTok, the phone numbers and IP addresses will not be viewable by the Chinese staff but some other elements will, and most of the TikTok's uploads are public so, it seems quite a lot will still be shared across borders in some applications.

I am not even sure if it will solve all the problems of the EU Commission, but TikTok is still moving forward with the project, and the Norwegian data center is the next step in the project for Clover.

"Our dedicated European enclave, where the data of our European users is now by default stored, is hosted on servers in our US and Ireland data centers and now in Norway. We are also pleased to announce that NCC Group, the independent security provider for Project Clover, has started continuous monitoring of the security gateway environments that give added protection to our European data."

TikTok has adopted the same approach in the United States. It initiated "Project Texas," which was designed to let U.S. officials know that there was a clear separation of user data in the United States and its Chinese staff. It also partnered with Oracle to make the source code available for U.S.-based oversight and ensure compliance with expectations regarding data separation.
It did not work. Congress approved a bill to make TikTok sell if it desires to continue operations in the United States. TikTok is currently litigating this issue. And while the U.S. government has been evasive about details of exactly what the threat is by TikTok in this regard, it does seem like that bill will eventually pass that will force TikTok to be owned by the States, or it'll receive a full ban in that region.

TikTok said it cannot strip its U.S. operations within the timeframe, while Chinese officials have vowed to oppose the sell-off push entirely. Which could see TikTok effectively banned in the region some time next year, though that may also depend on the outcome of next month's election, with Presidential candidate Donald Trump vowing to "save TikTok" as part of his appeal to younger voters.

There is also on the side of the officers of the EU across the world vigilance regarding their data practices, but out of the solutions they considered thus far was not force selling or outright banning. Last year, the European Commission banned employees from using TikTok in office devices due to a growing cyber threat and several questions were raised about how much is really that addictive nature of algorithms put up by TikTok upon the minor users of this application.

You would expect the officials in the EU to push harder than their US counterparts on this front, though data sharing back to China likely would fall into a different category than the current DSA legislation, given the more stringent data privacy and consent laws in the region.

Either way, TikTok has to convince EU officials that it's keeping EU user data safe, or else it'll face more scrutiny. And if the U.S. ban does go through, that could raise the stakes once again and put more pressure on the app.