CHINESE-OWNED VIDEO-SHARING app TikTok is set to create two hundred new jobs in Ireland over the next three months. 

The company’s Dublin operation currently employs almost 900 people and plans to bring its employee numbers here to 1,100 by early 2021. 

The announcement comes after the opening of the company’s Europe, Middle East, Africa Trust and Safety Hub in Dublin earlier this year.  The new roles will be across trust and safety, data privacy and protection, and commercial. 

The company had also previously announced plans to establish a European data centre here over the next two years. The €420 million data centre, the company’s first in Europe, is to be operational by 2022 and signals TikTok’s “long-term commitment” to Ireland. 

Taoiseach Micheál Martin hailed the app as an “amazing success story” while welcoming today’s announcement. 

“I welcome TikTok’s commitment to Ireland and its pledge to increase numbers to over 1,100 in 2021. These are high-quality jobs, but more specifically, they are aimed at ensuring that people can use the app safely while upholding the highest data protection standards,” Martin said. 

“In less than a year, Ireland has rapidly become a vital centre for both our European and global operations,” Vanessa Pappas, Interim Head of TikTok said. 

Its strong pool of skilled and diverse talent, booming digital and technology sector, and rich heritage of arts and culture, make it such an attractive base for a platform that prides itself on being an inclusive home for creative expression

Meanwhile, TikTok asked a Washington court yesterday to stop an order from US President Donald Trump’s administration from taking effect this week as the White House seeks to ban the Chinese-owned app in the United States.

Chinese company ByteDance is facing a Thursday deadline to restructure ownership of the app in the United States to meet US security concerns.

In its court petition, TikTok asked for more time, saying it has not received enough feedback on its proposed solution.

The company said in a statement that it had asked the government for a 30-day extension because it was “facing continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted” but it had not been granted.

It was turning to the court for that reason, it said.

US President Donald Trump signed a set of orders against the video platform during the summer.

One required ByteDance to sell its US TikTok operations within 90 days, citing national security concerns. The company also faced an order that would effectively ban the app from the country by the same date.

But on 30 October, a Pennsylvania judge issued an injunction temporarily blocking the order aimed at banning it. The order would have knocked the app offline by cutting it off from US businesses providing website hosting, data storage and other fundamentals needed to operate.

Trump has accused the popular video-sharing app of handing over American user data to Beijing – which the company flatly denies.

After negotiations with several US firms, ByteDance and TikTok proposed creating a new company with IT company Oracle as a technology partner and retail giant Walmart as a business partner.

The plan seemed to convince the administration, but the platform is still awaiting a green light.

TikTok said that with Thursday’s “deadline imminent and without an extension in hand, we have no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the US.”

TikTok has over 200 million users in the US and Europe. 

- With reporting from AFP