TikTok fined £12.7M for misusing children's data

The internal law team at TikTok likely cost two times as much just processing this case.<p>12.7M is pocket change.

Charmingly small numbers.<p>I&#x27;ve been thinking for a while: how about governments fine in voting equity rather than cash? Hand the relevant voting equity over to a coop of users. It is probably the only fair way to deal with these things that would be adequately scary to work. Bonus points for bringing about democratic cooperative control of some tech giants.

&quot;While we disagree with the ICO&#x27;s decision, which relates to May 2018 - July 2020, we are pleased that the fine announced today has been reduced to under half the amount proposed last year.&quot;<p>So they will pay half of 12.7? Or is 12.7 already the half?

My question is why have they singled out Tiktok? This seems political to me.<p>Last year Ofcom published a report on childrens&#x27; use of social media. It found:<p>&quot;For children aged 8-12 who used social media the proportions with their own profile were; eight in ten (79%) among Snapchat users, 72% for Facebook, around two-thirds on each of the other platforms (i.e. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter), except YouTube at 43%.&quot;<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ofcom.org.uk&#x2F;__data&#x2F;assets&#x2F;pdf_file&#x2F;0015&#x2F;245004&#x2F;children-user-ages-chart-pack.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ofcom.org.uk&#x2F;__data&#x2F;assets&#x2F;pdf_file&#x2F;0015&#x2F;245004&#x2F;...</a>

Article is light on details. What did TikTok do? Did they literally just not have a checkbox for confirming that the user was older than 13 when they sign up? Seems like a rookie mistake.

See also: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35437449" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35437449</a><p>Dang, maybe the threads should be merged?

Probably a rounding error in their budget &#x2F; lawsuit fund.

This still doesn&#x27;t go far enough to the standards of the major big tech companies having similar breaches elsewhere. Another slap on the wrist. TikTok should get a fine in the hundreds of millions, and for repeat offences should be in the billions, just like Google and Facebook did.<p>Regulators are never tired of collecting and issuing fines to companies that are repeat offenders for privacy breaches and violations as I said before.

So what is 12,000,000 divided by 12,000,000,000?<p>This world is a joke and your kids are the punchline.

This explains why they were running a ton of OOH ads about kid&#x27;s safety on the platform a few months ago then.

&gt; It says the breaches happened between May 2018 and July 2020.<p>What was the breach?

so there’s a right way to use children’s data?<p>or any individual’s data?

WHAT! Oh wait nvm its TikTok<p>To be honest, it was expected, right?