This Friday, the Belgian federal government decided to ban the Chinese social media app TikTok from its employees’ official devices for security reasons.
In recent weeks, similar measures have been taken by the European Union, as well as by the US and Canadian governments.
“The TikTok app is now banned at the federal level. This is a logical and necessary decision,” said one of the Deputy Prime Ministers, environmentalist Georges Gilkin, announcing the decision on Twitter this Friday.
The ban extends to ministers, their offices and the federal civil service, as was decided by the National Security Council following a report from intelligence agencies that pointed to platform security risks.
Chinese company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, has long ensured that it does not share user data with Chinese authorities.