TikTok confirms plans for second Irish data centre

The fast-growing video platform TikTok is reportedly in an advanced stage of finalising plans for a second data centre. The social media platform giant said that it would work with a third-party service provider to build the centre.

TikTok's general manager of European operations, Rich Waterworth, said that the new centre would be an addition to the site announced last year.

That side follows a €600 million investment from the social media company and will be located within Echelon's data centre campus in Clondalkin. It is set to go live later this year.

Echelon data center in Clondalkin 3D render – Echelon Data Centres

“Regarding local data storage, in line with the growth of our community, we're looking to expand our European data storage capacity,” Waterworth told The Independent.ie.

“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,” he added.

After the Chinese company Bytedance acquired Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it into TikTok, the social media platform gained popularity. In the past year, TikTok has faced scrutiny over its data collection practices.

Due to fears that data could be passed onto the Chinese government, the US Senate passed a vote to ban federal employees from using the app on government-owned devices.

Mr Waterworth said that TikTok is focused on showing European users 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 said.

In the last month, TikTok announced its plans to lay off some recruitment staff based in its Dublin offices. With over 3,000 employees in Ireland, the company has already begun to reduce recruitment jobs in the US.