The difference with TikTok is that the app has kept out of the crosshairs of commercial interests in Europe. "The user base of TikTok is a lot bigger than a lot of people in Europe think," he said. More than half of people aged 16 to 24 in France and Germany use TikTok, according to data.ai. He is worried the platform poses "several unacceptable risks for European users," including "data access by Chinese authorities, censorship, [and] tracking of journalists." Why Europe's tone is changingLast month, ByteDance admitted to using two journalists' TikTok data to locate their physical movements, according to a widely-reported internal memo.

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