TikTok has revealed that it now has 150m monthly active users across Europe (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK).

The figure was revealed in an update by Rich Waterworth, TikTok Operations & Marketing – Europe. He also revealed that over 5,000 people now work for TikTok in 10 countries across the region – Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

“It's truly humbling to see how TikTok has become part of the culture and fabric of everyday life for people in Europe,” Waterworth wrote. “We're committed to continuing to accelerate real-world opportunity for our community while striving to set a new standard in safety and security to maintain TikTok as a place that excites and entertains for years to come.”

He also said that TikTok would continue to enhance external visibility of the work it does to protect its community, including by opening its physical European Transparency and Accountability Centre in Dublin next month, where expert audiences will be able to learn more about its work to keep people on the platform safe.

Finally, he said TikTok remains focused on building trust with its community by demonstrating to them that their data is secure.

“We're continuing to deliver against the data governance strategy we set out for Europe last year, which includes further reducing employee access to European user data; minimising data flows outside of Europe; and storing European user data locally,” he wrot.

“Regarding local data storage, in line with the growth of our community, we're looking to expand our European data storage capacity. We are at an advanced stage of finalising a plan for a second data centre in Ireland with a third-party service provider, in addition to the site announced last year. We're also in talks to establish a third data centre in Europe to further complement our planned operations in Ireland. European TikTok user data will begin migrating this year, continuing into 2024.”