The agency, which oversees the company because its EU base is in Dublin, gave TikTok a three-month ultimatum to bring its data processing in line with the bloc’s strict General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR.
The fine follows intense scrutiny of child safeguarding practices at the company, best known for viral dance challenges and owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd. TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users worldwide, continues to face potential bans and earlier this month was added to a list of tech firms that have six months to comply strict new digital markets rules in the EU.
“We respectfully disagree with the decision, particularly the level of the fine imposed,” TikTok said in a statement. It said the Irish authority’s “criticisms are focused on features and settings that were in place three years ago, and that we made changes to well before the investigation even began, such as setting all under 16 accounts to private by default.”
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