TikTok has announced plans to build its first data centre in Europe days after President Trump threatened to ban the short video-sharing platform in the US.
The Chinese-owned social media company is planning a €420 million euros (£373 million) data centre in Ireland amid US government claims about how it was handling users' personal information.
The tech firm said that the facility will store data generated by European users, and will become its third such repository alongside the US and Singapore.
It came after President Trump threatened TikTok with being banned in the US, claiming the firm posed a national security risk.
This charge is denied by its Beijing-based parent company Bytedance, which is reportedly in talks with Microsoft to sell its operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said their own security review found no evidence to support the claim of such risk.
The new Irish facility, which could take up to two years to build, will process and archive data such as videos and messages generated by TikTok users.
The announcement also comes days after it was revealed TikTok had set its sights on relocating its headquarters to from the US to London, a move the government has said it will not block.
TikTok, which exploded in popularity among teenagers with its lip-syncing music videos, has been downloaded more than two billion times.
Its growth has concerned Facebook, which introduced its own clone called Instagram Reels in an attempt to entice back young audiences.
TikTok collects a trove of user information to target them with ads and makes its algorithms more accurate.
The personal data it collects is very similar to that hoovered up by Facebook, and includes contact numbers, GPS coordinates, web browsing data via outside app cookies, keystroke patterns and also other information obtained from third-party sources.
However, critics of the app say its ownership structure means China’s ruling Communist Party could easily demand access to people's personal details under national intelligence laws.
Theo Bertram, TikTok’s director of public policy for Europe and a former advisor to Tony Blair, told the BBC: "It's a symbol of our long-term commitment to Europe, and I think that's an important message for our users and our creators at this time.”
He added: "We welcome scrutiny. If the way that we're judged is for the security services to carry out a factual review of what we are doing, we're happy with that.”
Mr Bertram said TikTok would be happy to release its source code to security services for review.