The government’s decision was announced after the meeting of the National Security Council.
Deputy Prime Minister Georges Gilkinet said in a statement on his Twitter account that the ban decision was taken at the federal level.
“We made a sensible and necessary decision.” Using the expression Gilkinet, he also stated that he will now only be on Facebook and Twitter.
It was noted that in addition to the federal government, the Flemish government will likewise impose a ban on TikTok for public employees. The Walloon government is expected to take the same decision soon.
The Belgian Cyber Security Center also warned that TikTok collects significant amounts of data from users, sometimes users are not aware of it, and this poses a risk in terms of violation of privacy.
The center’s warning also stated that TikTok can manipulate information flow and content through algorithms, and Chinese laws force TikTok to cooperate with Chinese intelligence.
Some Western countries, especially the USA, and the European Union (EU) institutions decided to ban the use of TikTok on devices used by official employees for work in the past weeks.