Hard blow to TikTok. Popular platform videos belong to the Chinese giant ByteDanceWill have to pay the largest fine in its history, up to 345 million euros privacy from children.
This Friday, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) ruled that TikTok had failed to protect the personal information of its users aged between 13 and 17 by making their accounts public by default. Their contents between July and December 2020 minors They were exposed to interaction with other users.
HE regulator Irish also condemns TikTok for allowing minor user accounts to be paired with unverified adult accounts. Therefore, these opened the door to sending private direct messages to teenagers over the age of 16, and there were risks that this could pose. Already in 2020, the Spanish National Police warned: pedophiles They use TikTok to communicate with potential victims.
Additionally, the decision states that: application also violated General Data Protection Regulation They stated that the Company “failed to provide sufficient information on this matter” due to the European Union’s (EU) (GDPR) failure to address the risks arising from allowing boys and girls under 13 to access the platform. transparency to child users”.
Oppression of minors
The regulator also warned that TikTok was pressuring young people who join the platform to make their accounts public. This is done through deceptive designs that manipulate them into accepting this condition. Therefore, the company has been instructed to change this practice within the next three months. Failure to comply with this sanction.
The penalty imposed on TikTok was the fifth largest penalty imposed on a technology company under the GDPR.
TikTok Response
TikTok shared its position with the media. “We respectfully disagree with the decision, especially the level of fine imposed. The DPC (the regulator)’s criticism focuses on features and regulations that were available three years ago and which we had changed for the better before the investigation even began, such as all accounts for people under 16 being set to private by default,” explained spokesperson Morgan Evans.
Similarly, the company said this September that it would comply with the regulator’s order asking it to expand privacy settings for new users aged 16 and 17 by eliminating deceptive patterns used so far. It has also committed to changing the pop-up that young Internet users see when they post a video for the first time.