Ireland slapped TikTok with serious fines and, perhaps more worrying for the social media company, allegations of questionable data practices. That’s a major issue for TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, which has been attempting to convince the West, most notably the U.S., that its users are safe from their data being shared with China.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined TikTok 530 million euros — roughly $600 million — because it could not guarantee that users’ data was being stored in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. The DPC also said that TikTok admitted it had stored limited European user data in China, which it had previously denied. TikTok told the DPC it had since deleted that data.
“The GDPR requires that the high level of protection provided within the European Union continues where personal data is transferred to other countries,” DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement.
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“TikTok’s personal data transfers to China infringed the GDPR because TikTok failed to verify, guarantee, and demonstrate that the personal data of [European Economic Area] users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU.”
The fines from Ireland’s privacy watchdog could prove damaging for TikTok, especially amid its fight to remain available in the U.S. A renewed U.S. TikTok ban was averted in early April after President Donald Trump once again issued a 75-day extension.
The U.S. law that would ban TikTok does so, in part, over concerns quite similar to those laid out by Ireland’s DPC. The U.S. does not want its citizens’ data in the hands of China’s government. TikTok has insisted it doesn’t share U.S. user data with China.
Still, U.S. companies are lining up to purchase TikTok, which may be necessary for the platform to remain in the States.
