The real problem with TikTok In recent months, TikTok has become the target of an increasingly politicized global debate over data collection and the international app market. Yet the many invectives, think pieces, and public debate around the app have missed what actually makes TikTok so insidious. The real problem with TikTok is its continuous, invasive, and illegal violations of children’s privacy. TikTok is a serial offender of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In February 2019, TikTok paid a then-record fine for violating COPPA and agreed to make changes to protect children going forward, including complying with the law’s requirement to get parental permission before collecting any data from users under 13. But TikTok still isn’t complying with the law. Instead of giving parents a say, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, remarkably claims they don’t need to get parental permission because the app is for users thirteen and up. Yet as we documented in a groundbreaking complaint to the FTC in May, TikTok is notoriously popular among children as young as 8! Our complaint received a huge boost this summer when a report by the New York Times revealed that the platform classifies nearly one-third of its users as under 14. In all, TikTok is likely illegally collecting the data from more than 10 million children who shouldn’t even be on the app at all! TikTok’s failure to comply with COPPA has concrete implications. TikTok uses its trove of illegally collected data to serve kids manipulative ads and the content that is most likely to keep them on the app as long as possible. Plus, TikTok’s failure to protect children puts them at risk from inappropriate contact from adults. That’s why since filing our FTC complaint against TikTok, CCFC has continued to meet with officials at the FTC and the Department of Justice to push them to ensure that TikTok answers for its flagrant violations of the law and putting kids at risk. And in letters to Oracle and Wal-Mart, we urged each company to take immediate steps to stop TikTok’s illegal collection of children’s data. We also asked these companies to create youth data protection practices that would set a standard for the entire tech industry. No matter what TikTok’s future holds, we know one thing is certain: CCFC won’t stop working to make sure that kids and families are protected from TikTok’s reckless privacy practices. |
