Ireland's DPC fines TikTok €345M after finding it in breach of GDPR in relation to how it handles children's data and gives the company three months to comply
The decision closes the children’s-data portion of scrutiny that began with the Irish commissioner’s 2021 probe into TikTok’s child-data handling and China transfers. It establishes a concrete enforcement outcome after a long-running investigation rather than a new policy proposal.
TikTok faces a €345M penalty and a three-month deadline to bring the cited children’s-data practices into compliance.
Ireland’s DPC turns its investigation into an enforceable GDPR precedent focused on how a major platform treats younger users’ information.
Second-order effects
Other consumer platforms with significant underage audiences face stronger incentives to review child-facing data controls and documentation, since the enforcement shows that prolonged GDPR probes can culminate in material sanctions.
The penalty increases the operational and legal cost of designing youth experiences around data collection, while an appeal can delay final resolution without removing the underlying compliance burden.
Third-order effects
If repeated across platforms, child-data enforcement could make privacy-by-default product design a more central competitive and governance requirement for services used by minors.
The case points to a GDPR regime in which large platforms must manage ongoing regulator oversight across distinct data practices, not treat a single settlement or remediation as a complete reset.
The trend: European privacy enforcement is increasingly translating long-running platform investigations—especially those involving minors—into product-level compliance obligations and large financial exposure.
TikTok is solidly a big tech company now. It's on the list of gatekeepers as defined by the EU's digital markets act (DMA) and now has their first GDPR fine. I remember when musical.ly was a cute little lip syncing app popular with teens. You either die a hero or live long eno…
TikTok is really, really popular with kids. This month, a survey of 5,000 Irish schoolchildren found that the majority of 12-year-olds in Ireland use TikTok, ranging between 55pc in primary school to 80pc in secondary school.
Today's decision primarily relates to features & settings in the app as it was in 2020. Most of the criticisms are no longer relevant because we changed the settings before the investigation even began, such as making all under-16 accounts private-by-default back in early 2021.
TikTok's response to today's €3.45m GDPR fine. They already fixed it. Fair enough to point this out, as the DPC does in its decision. That's why fines *do* matter a bit—most stuff gets fixed with a tap on the shoulder, but the unlawfulness still needs addressing. [image]
Honest question (and not in a trollish way): Are these online platforms less law-abiding than companies in other sectors of the economy, or other, non-infrastructural types of company? When every day seems to bring another set of huge fines, it sometimes seems that way.
It's important that tech companies are held fully accountable for the safety and privacy of children. Gone are the days when unclear info could be used to trick children to give up give up their data. #Tiktok
@DPCIreland today announced the decision of its investigation into TikTok. Read more about our response and how we're committed to continuing to strengthen protections for teenagers on our platform. 👇https://newsroom.tiktok.com/ ...
The 🇮🇪 DPC decision published today in relation to TikTok focuses on settings in place in 2020. Most criticisms are no longer relevant as we made changes before the investigation even began, eg setting all <16 accounts to private by default. More here: https://newsroom.tiktok.com…
Interesting that TikTok also commissioned a report and submitted it in defence of the transparency of privacy settings to children, written by @alicetiara Alice Marwick, but its conclusion was rejected by the Irish DPC.
This seems fine/good. I oppose misguided calls to “ban” TikTok, but I have zero problems with fining the shit out of them for violating privacy laws https://www.politico.eu/...
TikTok's lead regulator in the EU has fined the company $370M for children's privacy violations under GDPR. Other TikTok fines related to kids' data: Britain: $16M in 2023. Netherlands: ~$1M in 2021. FTC: $5.7M https://musical.ly/ settlement in 2019.https://www.forbes.com/ ...
TikTok gets a €345 million fine from the Irish DPC after another “binding decision” from colleagues at the EDPB. Main issues: • Data minimisation • Data protection by design and by default • Security • Transparency No Art 8 GDPR (children's consent), BUT... [image]