TikTok has been fined almost £1.9 million for failing to provide Ofcom with accurate parental control data, the communications regulator said on Wednesday.
According to Ofcom, the Chinese video-sharing giant initially provided inaccurate data, and took more than three weeks to alert the regulator after identifying the error.
The company then took another four months to provide accurate but partial data, more than seven months after the original deadline.
The failings meant Ofcom was forced to remove details from its child safety transparency report at the last minute. The regulator said its work to promote transparency was materially disrupted.
Following an investigation into the failings, Ofcom concluded that “TikTok failed to fully cooperate with Ofcom’s statutory request for information and with our work in producing the Child Safety Report. As such, the company contravened its duties under s368Z10 and s368Y of the Communications Act 2003.
The regulator issued a fine of £1.875 million, which includes a 25 percent discount because of TikTok’s acceptance of the investigation’s findings.
Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s enforcement director, said in a statement: “Ofcom’s job is to scrutinise platforms’ safety features, and gathering information is a critical part of holding tech firms to account. When we demand data, it must be accurate and submitted on time. We won’t hesitate to take enforcement action if any company fails to do this.”
TikTok was asked by Ofcom to provide data on the take-up of its parental controls feature “Family Pairing” last year as part of the regulator’s work to assess what safety measures video-sharing platform had in place to protect children from harmful content.
According to Ofcom, TikTok provided information on Sept. 4, 2023. Almost three months later, TikTok informed Ofcom that the data it had provided was inaccurate, and that it was trying to identify the root cause.
This was less than two weeks before Ofcom published its report, and Ofcom’s investigation found that TikTok had identified the error more than three weeks before flagging it.
TikTok then committed to providing accurate information from an alternative data source, and ultimately provided accurate but partial data on March 28, 2024.
Ofcom said its investigation has uncovered “a number of failings” in TikTok’s data governance processes.
“Not only did the company have insufficient checks in place leading to an inaccurate data submission to us in the first place, but TikTok was also slow in bringing the error to our attention or to remedy the issue.
“Despite being aware that we intended to include its parental controls data in an imminent transparency report, TikTok did not inform Ofcom about the inaccuracy for more than three weeks after discovering the issue.
“This delay meant that we were forced, at a late stage, to remove details of the effectiveness of TikTok’s parental controls from the report, materially disrupting our work to promote transparency.”
Setting out the considerations it had taken into account when deciding the amount of the fine, Ofcom said TikTok is a “large, well-resourced company, which is well aware of its regulatory obligations,” and its failings had a direct impact on Ofcom’s regulatory work, but it was the first time that TikTok has been found in breach of Ofcom’s rules.
A TikTok spokesperson said: “We inadvertently provided inaccurate information to Ofcom regarding the use of Family Pairing in the UK, which significantly undercounted the actual number of people using this pioneering parenting tool.
“While we subsequently provided the correct information, we fell short of our obligations by not reporting the error sooner, and apologise for any disruption this caused.
“We are committed to fully cooperating with all of Ofcom’s requests and have implemented improvements to our internal processes.”
In April last year, TikTok was fined £12.7 million by the Information Commissioner’s Office because it “did not do enough” to make sure underage children were not using its platform and ensure that their data were used correctly.
