Children's data protection

New legal trouble for TikTok in the USA

TikTok is facing new legal problems in the USA. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) assumes that TikTok has violated a US law on children's data protection and has called in the Department of Justice. The short video app from China denies the allegations.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) did not provide any further details on the alleged violations in its announcement on Tuesday. Such a referral of a case to the Department of Justice is not usually made public - this time, however, the authority considers it to be in the public interest. The FTC is responsible for consumer protection in the USA, among other things, and also plays an important role in competition policy.

TikTok announced that it had been in talks with the FTC for more than a year. The company expressed disappointment that the authority was taking the legal route "instead of continuing to work with us on a reasonable solution". Even after TikTok's statement, the specific allegations remained unclear. The video platform also countered that many of them related to previous events and practices, some of which were incorrect or had already been rectified.

Earlier agreement not followed?
In 2019, TikTok agreed to pay 5.7 million dollars to settle allegations made by the FTC in relation to its predecessor company Musical.ly. The allegations concerned the collection of data from children under the age of 13 without parental consent in violation of US law.

According to the FTC, the current investigation into TikTok and its Chinese-based parent company Bytedance began with a review of whether the platform was complying with the requirements of the agreement at the time.

In the sights of the USA
TikTok is already defending itself in the USA against a law aimed at forcing a change of ownership. US politicians fear that the Chinese government could access American users' data via Bytedance and use the app for propaganda. TikTok rejects this and went to court in the USA to stop the law.