TikTok is a platform hugely popular among children and teenagers. Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok's owner, was recently fined by European authorities to the tune of €345 million for numerous failings related to the protection of privacy and the rights of underage users. The investigation was carried out by the Irish data protection commission, and its findings shed new light on the controversies surrounding the platform.

Children's privacy online

The investigation was carried out by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), an independent investigative body that examines whether tech companies comply with EU data protection rules. The probe began in September 2021 and produced findings that are not particularly comforting for ByteDance.

According to Reuters, between 31 July and 31 December 2020 TikTok breached a number of the rights of underage users. One of the main allegations is that content created by users under the age of 16 was set to public by default by the platform, and users who wanted to switch their profiles to private had to adjust the relevant settings themselves.

TikTok vs. safety and privacy

TikTok fined for violating children's privacy

In addition, the DPC claims that a feature known as "Family Pairing", which was supposed to let parents control how much time their children spent on the platform and what content they were exposed to, did not work properly in practice. A child could present any user as their parent, and the platform did not carry out sufficient verification of the guardian's identity.

Although TikTok introduced fixes to this feature in November 2020 and made accounts of existing users under 16 private by default in January 2021, the DPC's allegations concern only the period in 2020. ByteDance disagrees with the DPC's decision, especially with the size of the fine imposed.

TikTok addressed the whole matter in a statement:

With all due respect, we disagree with this decision, particularly with regard to the size of the fine imposed. The criticism from the Data Protection Commission (DPC) focuses on features and settings that existed three years ago. Long before proceedings in this case were even launched, we introduced a range of changes in the app, such as setting all accounts of users under the age of 16 to private by default.