UK says it began an investigation into TikTok's data privacy practices for young users shortly after the FTC fined the app $5.7M for child privacy violations
Context & Ripple Effects
TikTok entered 2019 carrying a $5.7M FTC settlement over Musical.ly's handling of children's data — the largest child-privacy penalty of its kind in the US at the time — and responded with a new under-13 app experience. Within months, the UK's ICO opened its own investigation into the same population of young users, turning a US enforcement action into a multi-jurisdiction problem.
First-order effects
- The ICO's probe puts TikTok's under-13 user base and its data practices under formal UK scrutiny, running parallel to the FTC settlement rather than superseding it.
Second-order effects
- The FTC action gave other regulators a template: the ICO's provisional finding of a £27M penalty in 2022 shows the UK case maturing into a fine far larger than the US one.
Third-order effects
- The pattern held — the ICO's 2023 £12.7M fine for ~1.4M under-13 users, followed by a 2025 probe into how TikTok uses 13-to-17-year-olds' data for recommendations (per Reuters coverage), points to children's privacy becoming a standing, escalating enforcement track for the app rather than a one-off settlement.
The trend: Child-privacy enforcement against TikTok is compounding across jurisdictions, with each regulator using the last fine as a floor for the next investigation.