As part of its ongoing efforts to build good relations with European regulators, TikTok said it has begun work on a previously announced 12 billion euro data center in Norway. The short-video social company has spent the past few years trying to convince the world that it is not beholden to its Chinese parent company ByteDance, an effort that has been hampered by revelations last year that Chinese employees had access to user data in Europe and the United States.
However, TikTok has made a series of commitments in an effort to allay concerns about its use of data under Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA). The commitments are bundled in a plan called Project Clover, which includes opening local data centers in Europe and introducing new data access and control processes.
The €12 billion investment the company has committed spans the next 10 years and includes not only funding for three data centers but also an ongoing partnership with a third-party security firm called NCCGroup.
After multiple delays, TikTok began moving European user data to its first data center in Ireland in September this year and said it expected to complete the process by the end of 2024. The company also revealed plans for a second data center in Ireland and a third in the Hamar region of Norway.
According to TikTok, it now owns the first of three buildings in the data center and will start installing servers next summer to migrate European users' data. Two more buildings will be opened soon.