TikTok owner fined by UK authority for failing to protect children -.

Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office has charged TikTok’s owner ByteDance with misusing children’s data and fined them £12.7 million.

Although TikTok’s terms of service require a user to be 13 to post on the platform, many children (1.4 million in the UK, according to ICO statistics) were able to bypass this requirement and used the app freely.

This means that TikTok used these children’s data without their parents’ consent, which led to the fine. However, since the owner of TikTok reportedly earned about $80 billion last year, the £12.7 million fine will not put that much of a dent in ByteDance’s overall profits.

Thanks, The Guardian.