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TikTok drops appeal over £12.7m UK fine for under-13 access
The UK regulator said up to 1.75 million children under 13 used TikTok in 2020, and it found weak age checks, limited action after notice, and missing parental consent.
Chinese-owned TikTok has dropped its appeal against a £12.7 million fine from the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office for failing to prevent children under 13 from using the platform, according to the Guardian Business.
The ICO fined TikTok in 2023, saying it did very little, if anything, to address underage use. The regulator said TikTok’s minimum user age is 13, but that failure to enforce the limit resulted in up to 1.75 million UK children under 13 using the service in 2020. The ICO also cited inadequate age verification and failure to remove underage users, along with problems around how data collection was disclosed and parental consent.
TikTok said it disagreed with the ruling, but decided to pay the fine because it related to a period, 2018 to 2020, before it implemented many youth safety measures and policies. The company also withdrew an appeal against an ICO request for information about how its algorithm processes teenagers’ personal data and how it serves potentially harmful content, and the ICO said it will resume its investigation.
The report also notes that age-checking measures at tech platforms are expected to be central as the UK’s new under-16 age limit for accessing social media comes into force next year.