TikTok Drops Appeal and Pays £12.7 Million UK Fine

TikTok dropped its appeal and agreed to pay a £12.7 million fine to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for data protection failures. The penalty relates to the period between May 2018 and July 2020, during which the company failed to prevent children under 13 from accessing the platform and mishandled their personal data.

The ICO estimated that as many as 1.75 million UK children under 13 used the service in 2020, despite the platform's minimum age requirement. TikTok stated it disagrees with the ruling but will pay the fine because the findings relate to a historical period and do not reflect current youth safety measures and policies.

In a separate development, the company withdrew an appeal against an ICO request for information regarding how its recommender systems process the personal data of teenagers aged 13 to 17. This allows the regulator to resume its investigation into the delivery of potentially harmful content to minors.