The Walloon, Flemish and federal governments decided this week to ban TikTok for all government employees

Walloon Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo (PS) got the ball rolling earlier this week by banning TikTok on the PCs and duty phones of officials within the Walloon government. Federal Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open VLD) later followed with a similar ban within the federal government.

Now the Flemish government is following suit with a total ban on TikTok on computers and smartphones. Digital Flanders will block the app and ask officials to remove the application. Flemish Interior Minister Bart Somers (Open VLD) advises local governments to do the same and ban TikTok on work phones and PCs.

Belgium is not alone in this. The US took the lead earlier this month by banning TikTok, and several European institutions followed suit. In the European Parliament, access to the TikTok network will be blocked from March 20th.

Chinese parent company

Many government agencies around the world are concerned about the social media platform’s privacy practices. ByteDance, owner of TikTok, is a Chinese company headquartered in China. It is feared that the company will have to share personal data with the Chinese government.

ByteDance has repeatedly stated in a public statement that it does not share data with the Chinese government.

Educational institutions are now also observing with suspicion how the situation is developing. Education specialist Schoolit analyzed the issues surrounding TikTok late last month and concluded that it was mainly due to the poor relationship between the US and China. Finally, TikTok’s popularity plays a role, resulting in lost ad revenue for American platforms like Meta, Google, and Snapchat. There is no general advice for schools yet.