TikTok has been fined nearly £2M ($2.6B) by Ofcom, in a sign that the UK regulator is willing to take on the tech giants.
The hefty fine is due to the Chinese-owned social media behemoth’s failure to “accurately respond to a formal request for information” about its measures to protect children from harmful content. TikTok has accepted the findings and Ofcom said the penalty was reduced by 25% to £1.875M for this reason.
By law, companies are required to respond to statutory information requests from Ofcom in an “accurate, complete and timely way.”
Ofcom demanded information for a transparency report from TikTok over harmful content features and provisions last year, which it initially responded to on September 4 but subsequently highlighted that the data it had provided was not accurate and that it was conducting an internal investigation to understand the root cause of the inaccuracies.
Ofcom then opened an investigation, finding that TikTok had failed to inform it about inaccuracies for three weeks after discovering the issue, which meant that Ofcom was “forced, at a late stage, to remove details of the effectiveness of TikTok’s parental controls from the report, materially disrupting our work to promote transparency.”
“Our investigation uncovered a number of failings in TikTok’s data governance processes,” it added. “Not only did the company have insufficient checks in place leading to an inaccurate data submission to us in the first place, but TikTok was also slow in bringing the error to our attention or to remedy the issue.”
Ofcom noted that TikTok is a “well-resourced company, which is well aware of its regulatory obligations,” while acknowledging that it accepted the penalty and that this is a first-time offence.
The move shows that Ofcom is willing to act tough over new measures contained in the Online Safety Act, which passed last year.
In the U.S., a recent bill paved the way for the Bytedance-owned app to be banned in the nation if it isn’t sold. Yesterday, however, Donald Trump lent his support for the app, telling Bloomberg that competition is needed to take on the likes of Facebook and Instagram.
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