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TikTok has been fined 345 million euros by the European Union for its handling of the personal data of children and adolescent users, the first time the EU has fined the Chinese social media platform.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the regulator responsible for bringing TikTok technology into compliance with EU data protection laws, announced the fine on Friday after an investigation began in September 2021.
The DPC’s investigation found that TikTok breached EU data protection rules by defaulting the profiles of children aged 13 to 17 to public settings, meaning anyone on or off TikTok could view their content and contact them.
TikTok, which opened an office in Ireland in 2020 and this month opened a long-planned site in Dublin to store the data of EU citizens, has been criticized over the Compliance status was investigated by the DPC.
The fine is the latest to target social media platforms for lax privacy protections and comes as the DPC completes its investigation into TikTok’s transfer of data to China.
Facebook owner Meta was fined a record €1.2 billion this year and ordered to suspend the transfer of user data to the United States. In September 2022, Meta’s Instagram app was fined €405 million by the DPC for failing to protect children’s data.
The DPC said TikTok, which has 134 million monthly EU users, failed to provide child users with sufficient transparency into what happened to their data and pushed them to choose more privacy-invading options. TikTok does not disclose how many of its users are children.
Additionally, the DPC said that under a family pairing setting, there is no way to verify whether the adult paired with a child’s account is a parent or guardian and whether that adult is able to allow someone over the age of 16 to access direct messaging features.
The social media app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, said it had changed its policy on most of the issues involved long before the investigation began and had not yet decided whether to appeal.
“We respectfully disagree with this decision, particularly the size of the fine,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
“The DPC’s criticism focuses on three-year-old features and settings that we made changes before the investigation began, such as setting all accounts under 16 to private by default,” the spokesperson added road.
Elaine Fox, TikTok’s European privacy director, said in a statement that the platform would “continue to strengthen protections for young people.”
The European Data Protection Board, the industry’s independent umbrella body, ordered the DPC to strengthen an initial decision it made last year following objections from Italian and German data protection authorities. But the level of fines remains unchanged.
TikTok has three months to comply with the ruling.
The DPC expects to share draft findings of its investigation into TikTok data transfers to China with other European data protection authorities by the end of the year.
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