TikTok brings lobbying fight to Europe

TikTok is gearing up for a major lobbying fight in Brussels.

The app’s developer, Beijing-based technology company ByteDance, was labeled a national security threat by U.S. lawmakers earlier this year. But it has mostly flown under the radar in Europe, where policymakers are hardly aware of the app’s existence.

That’s about to change.

TikTok is one of the few Chinese online platforms targeted at Western markets. It is also one of the fastest growing worldwide.

Over the past 12 months, the video-sharing app was downloaded more than 750 million times on app stores, outpacing U.S. competitors Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, according to data from research firm Sensor Tower. It now counts more than 500 million monthly active users across the globe, including some 12 million in its largest markets in Europe — Germany, France and the U.K.

The app is mainly used by teenagers — users have to be 13 to sign up, but it is easy to circumvent the age limit — who watch but also post short videos with music or lyrics in the background. Earlier this year, the 20-year-old U.S. rapper Lil Nas X was catapulted to international fame after his song, “Old Town Road,” went viral on the platform.

But TikTok’s main activity — publishing user-generated videos and targeted advertising based off the personal data of minors — also means it’s likely to fall into legal crosshairs in Europe, where policymakers are tightening the screws on how platforms police illegal content online and protect users’ data.

It also means the video-sharing app is eager to get itself a seat at the policymaking table. In the past few months, the company has hired policy experts in London, Dublin, Paris, Berlin and Brussels to help it navigate the European legislative environment and get involved in policy debates.

“TikTok recognizes that Brussels is an exporter of regulation. It’s a conversation they want to be a part of,” said Siada El Ramly, who leads Edima, a Brussels-based tech lobby representing Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Risky business

TikTok’s business model has already raised concerns with privacy regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission found the app illegally collected personal information from children and in February slapped the Chinese company with a $5.7 million fine. (Google’s YouTube recently also paid a record $170 million fine for alleged violations of the same U.S. children’s privacy law.)

The U.S. probe prompted the United Kingdom’s data protection authority to launch its own investigation, looking into whether TikTok violated privacy rules in handling the personal data of its underage users. Other European interventions could follow, under the EU’s tough General Data Protection Regulation, which allows for fines of up to 4 percent of a company’s annual global turnover.

TikTok also faces some of the same challenges as other social media platforms when it comes to combating fake news, hate speech and terrorist propaganda online. In October, the Wall Street Journal reported the Chinese app has been used by the terror organization ISIS as a recruiting tool.

Even if European lawmakers haven’t woken up to it yet, TikTok technically already falls under the scope of EU legislation on content moderation and copyright. It is also subject to new legislation that requires platforms to proactively remove flagged terrorist propaganda within an hour of it being posted, and it will have to follow the rules being written in an upcoming piece of legislation — the Digital Services Act — that will govern how platforms police illegal content online.

In some quarters, the app is also seen as a potential security risk. Reports that the app censored videos linked to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests and to Tibetan independence raised fears that the company is vulnerable to content censorship by the Chinese government.

In October, two influential U.S. senators called on the Trump administration to investigate whether the popular video app poses a national security risk to the U.S. Shortly after, the U.S. government started a national security review of ByteDance’s $1 billion acquisition of TikTok’s predecessor, the U.S. company Musical.ly. TikTok has denied all allegations.

Chinese companies go West

When it comes to getting ahead of the regulation game, TikTok is charting a different course to other Chinese heavyweights.

Most Chinese tech companies, such as Tencent and Baidu, have been largely absent on the EU policymaking scene. Partly, they’re just not that interested in the European market.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has no lobbyist accredited to the European Parliament in Brussels, for example, compared with five for Amazon, a direct competitor. In 2018, Alibaba spent about €700,000 in lobbying in Brussels, compared with close to €2 million for Amazon.

More recently, however, Chinese brands are taking more interest in Europe.

As the economy back home plateaus, Chinese companies with global ambitions are “looking for new markets, new growth opportunities,” said Chris Reitermann, CEO of the advertising agency Ogilvy China, who cited Europe as a “big priority” for his clients.

“A lot of the tech companies are paying quite close attention to what’s happening in Brussels and what’s happening in the various European markets,” said Reitermann.

With an interest in European markets comes an interest in shaping the policies that govern those markets. That includes joining transparency registers and relevant trade associations, as well as hosting public events and meeting with EU officials.

“There is a shift in how China is approaching its lobbying strategies, both through private companies and in the government,” said Katharine Ainger, a writer who has worked with Corporate Europe Observatory, a Brussels-based lobbying watchdog. “It’s embracing more the Western lobbying strategies.”

The first Chinese company to do so has been Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, which was forced to beef up its presence in Brussels after it came under fire for alleged security risks. It has had 46 meetings with top European Commission officials in the last five years, according to a report published in April by Corporate Europe Observatory.

ByteDance appears to be taking a more proactive approach — not waiting for Brussels to take the first punch.

A seat at the table

ByteDance, aware that the next European Commission wants to ramp up efforts to regulate platforms, is already working to get its foot in the door.

The company wants to make sure it will be a part of the EU policymaking conversation, according to a TikTok spokesperson. Its approach will embrace its startup culture: learning as it goes, the spokesperson added.

In Brussels, TikTok is looking for a policy manager whose role will be to “work with policymakers, private sector partners and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on issues of privacy, safety and security, intellectual property, e-governance, content policy.”

But its setup in the EU capital will be relatively modest, with a focus on filling out its roster of executives and public policy experts in the EU’s leading countries when it comes to tech regulation — the U.K., France and Germany.

In May, the Chinese app hired tech policy veteran Elizabeth Kanter, who has worked for SAP, Yahoo and Blackberry, as its global director of public policy in London. It has also advertised for a London-based head of privacy for Europe, Middle East and Africa to help it comply with Europe’s sweeping privacy law.

TikTok has also hired a slew of executives from the likes of Snapchat, Huawei and Facebook in other European capitals, according to data from LinkedIn, the business-focused social network. This focus on wooing national lawmakers, according to two people with knowledge of TikTok’s operations, is an acknowledgement that Berlin, Paris and London are likely to have a vocal say in issues affecting the company.

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“They need to prepare the ground for what’s to come,” according to a person in the industry with first-hand knowledge of the company’s thinking. “They benefit from the fact they are not perceived as Chinese [in Europe],” the person added.

The European Commission declined to comment on whether EU officials are concerned about the company and its impact on the bloc’s security. “TikTok has so far not been very relevant for our work,” said an EU official involved in digital policy.

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, participated in round tables on EU copyright reform organized by the European Commission in October and November. Its message: It is a virtuous player that does not facilitate copyright infringements on its platform and is here to play by the rules.

In France, where lawmakers are intervening heavily on content moderation, ByteDance recently joined Syntec Numérique, one of the country’s main trade associations. In the U.K., TikTok joined the Internet Watch Foundation, an organization fighting child pornography online that counts Google, Facebook and Snapchat among its members.

These are still early days. TikTok is not yet listed in the EU transparency register, nor is its parent company ByteDance. The app has not yet taken part in self-regulatory initiatives on hate speech, disinformation and terrorist propaganda organized by the European Commission and attended by Google and Facebook.

TikTok already has one major advantage over other Chinese companies: Unlike Huawei, it has not been labeled a public threat in Europe.

The EU’s hesitancy to cut off Huawei completely — as the U.S. has done when it comes to Chinese companies involved in critical infrastructure — also shows there’s more wiggle room on this side of the Atlantic, said William Echikson, the head of Digital Forum at the Centre for European Policy Studies and a former Google executive.

“In general, I think the Europeans are a bit more skeptical than Americans about Chinese security risks.”

Mark Scott contributed reporting. 

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