Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Today, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced a €345 million (around $367 million) fine on TikTok for how the company processes the data of children. The fine follows an investigation by the DPC announced in 2021 that looked at TikTok’s compliance with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws. Politico reported in August that the DPC was preparing to issue its penalty.
The probe focused on a few TikTok features: default account settings; “Family Pairing” settings; and age verification. After consulting with the European Data Protection Board, the DPC found that TikTok set children’s accounts to public by default when they signed up on the platform. That meant that kids’ videos were publicly viewable by…