TikTok Global could be fined by the European Union, via Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, as it opens two probes related to the use of children’s personal data.
The inquiries will look at the processing of children's personal data and more generally the transfer of personal data to China.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) is the EU’s lead data regulator, as Dublin is the European home of global tech firms including the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft.
Indeed, Tik Tok earlier this year inked a 15-year lease for a 202,000 square foot office building in Dublin, which will be the base of some 2,000 staff.
The DPC fined Facebook’s WhatsApp some €225mln under GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) earlier this month.
According to a Reuters report, the DPC can impose fines of up to 4% of a company’s global revenue and Tik Tok has been under scrutiny for ‘failing to protect children from hidden advertising and inappropriate content’.
The Chinese social-media company last month announced stricter privacy controls for its teenage users, Reuters noted.
Tik Tok parent company ByteDance is partially state-owned and it has come under at times intense scrutiny, most notably when US President Donald Trump sought to ban the app in the United States, nevertheless, amongst users it has remained very popular, particularly in youth demographics.
It was estimated that the platform has around 690mln international users, with around 100mln in each of Europe (17mln in the UK) and the United States.
Meanwhile, the separate Chinese version of the app, called Douyin, is said to have around 600mln users.