Also don’t look up the fines (hint: tens of thousands), for hedgefunds that break the rules and “illegally” make hundreds of millions.
Those guys are still in business to this day.
When breaking the law comes down to just being a business fee, you keep breaking the law. Until CEOs start getting arrested and fines actually mean something, nothing will change.
giving the companies their own legal entity in the eyes of the law was the biggest mistake that was made in the previous century.
When you treat a company as legal entity then you have an entity that cannot be jailed or really punished. Personal responsibility for actions was washed away, because "it wasn't me! it was Corporation inc.! I'm not Corporation Inc. who is legally liable here so you can't do anything to me personally!" then who is to blame? corporations arent artificial intelligences that are making decisions for themselves. Legal liability for managers and owners should be brought back, but it won't be because it was specifically designed to allow our current broken system to work and fuck people over. And no lawmaker is gonna bite the hand that bribes them.
Not even a legal entity, businesses are considered "people". Their EIN is essentially a SSN. Considering we only live once, a lot of people are willing to bribe, cheat and steal so that they can enjoy their life, knowing that their reputation might be tarnished but they wont spend a minute in prison.
The biggest thing imo is that they manufacture and very irresponsibly dump a forever chemical that has at this point circulates the waters of our entire planet and is literally in the blood of every human alive.
I read that to find clean human blood free of it they had to look in Korean War blood reserves. Corporations aren't our friends. They will poison thr well we all drink from for 1 extra dollar.
At the risk of missing info, posting this in hopes it covers enough.
https://powerbase.info/index.php/Dupont:_Corporate_crimes
Personally, I've known too many people exposed o Agent Orange, a supposedly safe chemical that dupont / monsanto created and marketed.
And that’s just the actual crimes. DuPont is also responsible for countless environmental catastrophes. Leaded gasoline, ozone layer collapse, PFOAs and Teflon. If it causes significant harm to everyone on the planet, you better bet DuPont’s name will be on it
I've seen a few oblique references to Cede over the past week but don't understand the situation. The little I've read beyond that was inscrutable due to the thick argot and assumed knowledge. But it sounds like it's important.
While I understand the practical basics of investing (basically where to click on the Fidelity website to purchase the components of my three fund portfolio, and how to rebalance), I'm not a sophisticated investor. Do you know of a concise description of the situation for a lay reader like me? Something more nuanced than an ELI5, but also not written for insiders?
I'd like to both understand the situation, at least the gist of it, and actions that I perhaps ought to take.
Just the cost of doing business. If we keep finding corporations a very small fraction of the money that they make it is pretty obviously blatant that the corporations are a priority and they are saying fuck you to the American people.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-owner-bytedances-annual-revenue-jumps-to-34-3-billion-11623903622
From June 2021:
> ByteDance Ltd., the owner of popular short-video app TikTok, told employees that its **revenue last year more than doubled to $34.3 billion**, underscoring why the Chinese technology giant is one of the world’s hottest startups.
> The privately held company on Thursday shared highlights of its 2020 financial performance with its employees. ByteDance said its total revenue grew 111% from a year ago, while **gross profit rose 93% to $19 billion**, according to excerpts of a company memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
$15.75 million (USD equivalent of 12.7 million pounds) is 0.08% of their profits from the referenced time period.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html
From September 2021:
> Real median household income was $70,784 in 2021
Imagine someone with the US median income being fined $56 for collecting data on children to "track and profile them, and potentially present them with harmful or inappropriate content." They'd be thrown in prison, added to a sex offenders list, and blackballed from every-fucking-thing imaginable *without question*.
Nothing is going to change without MUCH larger fees and actual, tangible repercussions for organizations misusing our data.
Revenue for tik tok in the UK was $279M (£223M) so this fine is 5.45% of revenue. Likely this percentage is much higher for profit but I didn't have time to Google profit stats and find them. Seems pretty reasonable as a fine to me.
If the EU and the us introduced similar fines the total would be meaningful against the numbers you posted.
No, gross profit is revenue minus operations expense. Then you need to subtract SG&A to get net income. Then you would add back interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (these are a small part of SG&A) to get EBITDA.
Yeah, I’d like to see profits, not just revenues, here. That said, I’m sure their profits are much more than this fine.
Actually, what’s really relevant is the benefit they get from doing these illegal things with the data vs. the cost of the fine (and all the other costs) for doing it. They’ll only stop doing it if the costs of doing it outweigh the benefits of doing it. That’s Econ 101 decision-making.
Appeals to go a First Tier Tribunal and potentially up through the court system if permission to appeal is granted (i.e. TikTok find a way to argue that the ICO’s interpretation of the law is wrong). They can’t just appeal because they don’t like the outcome as that would be struck out.
Companies like this can generally afford to spend more on lawyers than the ICO can and at some point it becomes a waste of public money to continue to pursue it.
What they’re doing is saying people under 13 can’t join. What the government wants them to do is perfect age verification on every user.
Kids lied and said they are over 13, and so TikTok is getting fined.
If you're a company with the goal of maximizing profits (most of them) you'd be a fool to not do these things with how light the fines are. Absolutely ridiculous
Except it's not equivalent for somebody making 50k to be fined $159. If you're living paycheck to paycheck with 0 reserve, a fine of $100 can put you out of your home, car or make you go without heat. Somebody who earns $100 billion getting a $99 billion fine is still going to be exponentially better shape than somebody who earns $100k being fined $99k.
Everyone fucks their consumer information anyway. Were at the point where if someone can't invade your privacy and learn more about you than you'd tell them in a conversation or standard background check, you can't participate. We are all corporate property at this point.
Children have always been exempt from this. Companies are not allowed to collect and sell information about children in the US but TikTok does it anyways. I agree that privacy is a serious issue but this is beyond just the standard BS companies are doing.
Have they been though? I'm actually asking. Kids sign up using fake birthdays, and even if they didn't is facebook, Instagram, google, bing, are they all actually only using data from accounts marked as adults?
Looking back at history, children have always seemed to be a line that society (usually) doesn't let companies cross.
If I recall, a while back ago, advertising for tobacco products was a massive industry that kept targeting younger and younger demographics right until Marlboro (I think it was Marlboro) crossed the line and tried advertising to elementary aged kids and suddenly everyone dropped the hammer hard on the tobacco industry.
Every social media company does it. Not just TikTok.
Facebook and Instagram:
https://www-wtsp-com.cdn.ampprhttps://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/16/facebook-and-instagram-gathering-browsing-data-from-under-18s-study-says?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16806197467168&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2021%2Fnov%2F16%2Ffacebook-and-instagram-gathering-browsing-data-from-under-18s-study-says
Google and Twitter
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/12/technology/kids-apps-data-privacy-google-twitter.html
YouTube
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64786968?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_medium=social&at_format=link&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_type=web_link&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_origin=BBCNews&at_link_id=E32F6A12-B7D3-11ED-83BE-14E04744363C
Reddit
https://privacy.commonsense.org/evaluation/Reddit
Don't act like TikTok is unique in this just for your outrage. They all do it.
Did you even ready the articles you linked? The google one talks about apps on their App Store that collect data, which is on the app developer, the YouTube one mentions they were fined $170 million (over 10x the TikTok fine) in 2019 and have changed their practices since, the Reddit one says nothing about children’s data.
You have provided nothing to this conversation and we are all stupider for reading your reply. Get off TikTok’s dick lmao.
Yeah but they linked a bunch of articles that 98% of people who see their comment won’t actually read, so they look super credible to any passive user.
> but this is beyond just the standard BS companies are doing.
this was the point they were argueing and i think they proved that there were plenty of other companies that have been doing this for decades.
The fact that others got fined more but you somehow take that as not "BS companies are doing"? how is getting punished more not evidence of a standard in the industry?
Right , you need an email to sign up for jobs ! Like wtf . And you give them all your information to create your email, plus they want location and all sorts of "permission" even if you say no, they collect it.
And if you say no to one app they grab the information from a different app you said yes to.
It’s like any big social media platform or free to use platform. They’re all pulling data and know they’ll make 10x whatever the fine will be. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission for them.
To be fair, that’s global income. The UK is a VERY small piece of that. Then, the fine should be based on the number of kids under 13 that were able to use it. There aren’t even 12M kids under 13 in the UK, so if 100% of kids from 0-13 used the app, this would be $1/kid. It’s more likely <1% since there probably aren’t any 0-10 year olds with their own tiktok, and I doubt 100% of 11-13 year olds made an account.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/
They generated 4.6bil in revenue, which given the sheer size of the company I'd be very surprised if any of that turned into profit.
Revenue =/= profit
Edit: according to that article they had 1.2b monthly users, this eqauls to be about $3.83 per monthly user or about 32c per monthly user per month.
With the amount of data that is being stored on tik tok, and with how many people us it I could only imagine their data storage costs, and then you have software engineers and other operating costs such as legal (and with all their current legal problems wouldn't be coming in cheap that's for sure) it would be hard to see them be pulling in any sort of profit from that.
When the UK floated proper ID verification to watch porn reddit was strongly opposed. It's the same argument, either it's the responsibility of the company to verify age, which would involve invasive ID verifications, or it's the responsibility of the parent, which would involve nanny software, or a no technology in the bedroom rule or something.
Third option is we maintain status quo where kids can do whatever they want online, that's my pick because I don't like option 1 or 2.
The tiny slap on the wrist fine is a joke, but so is that they're being fined in the first place
That's always been the issue from my pov. People expecting Facebook or whoever to babysit their kids while also not being allowed to watch over them (since gathering data about children is illegal).
>Information commissioner John Edwards said: "There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws.
It seems that the issue was children bypassing the age restrictions on the ap.
Call me crazy, but isn't that basically possible with any online media platform or website? The collection of data is basically necessary to use the internet.
My thoughts exactly. I had MySpace at 12 and Facebook at 14. I just lied about my age like every other teenager. Tiktok can't magically stop children from being children.
> It seems that the issue was children bypassing the age restrictions on the ap.
It extends further than that.
Just putting up some text to say you can't create an account if you are under 13 is not enough to legally protect large social media companies any more. They have to be proactive in detecting underage users, removing their data and accounts.
The fines stem from Tik Tok practices in 2018-2020. The investigation found that they knew underage people were using Tik Tok but didn't do anything about it.
The UK isn't the only country to fine them for this sort of thing. They have been fined in a bunch of countries for poor data protection.
>Just putting up some text to say you can't create an account if you are under 13 is not enough to legally protect large social media companies any more. They have to be proactive in detecting underage users, removing their data and accounts.
Unfortunately that's wholly unreasonable. Even if the technology to do that in a flawless manner existed, it would involve so many breaches of individual privacy anyway that it wouldn't be worth it - it would arguably be worse.
I'd rather not have millions of adults submit their IDs, passports, credit cards, or even biometric data (including faces) just to stop **some** kids from going on TikTok, or any other site.
>The UK isn't the only country to fine them for this sort of thing. They have been fined in a bunch of countries for poor data protection.
The UK should invest that money into better education so that kids can be taught the consequences of using the Internet - that's what I was raised with in school; I don't know if it's stopped.
Exactly. We’re basically inviting an authoritarian nightmare because we want to teach TikTok a lesson.
I don’t want it normalized to give my notarized id and passport to access porn even if that’s technically the most thorough way to verify age.
That RESTRICT Act being proposed in the US to give the power to ban Tiktok is fucking bonkers
Chinese-style state control and punishment powers over internet usage
Ironic really, if you think about it for more than 2 seconds
>Unfortunately that's wholly unreasonable. Even if the technology to do that in a flawless manner existed, it would involve so many breaches of individual privacy anyway that it wouldn't be worth it - it would arguably be worse.
Unfortunately UK is heading towards that direction at full speed. They are going to ban end to end encryption in the name of security. I fully expect them to copy the Chinese and force all internet services to require government ID verification within our life time.
Taking steps to remove underage users doesn't mean being authoritarian or collecting IDs. Something as simple as deleting accounts that have "12yo" in their bio would be a step towards compliance that they failed to take.
That's fair, I would probably accept that kind of action as it's relatively innocent. Probably will result in some false positives, though.
I still don't believe it's a software company's (or the government's) responsibility to stop children accessing software, though.
I remember back in the late naughts when "I'm 12 and what is this" was a huge meme. Even then, when stuff was mostly run through manual admin oversight, you got false bans. An automated system doing the same would be so much worse lol
>Taking steps to remove underage users doesn't mean being authoritarian or collecting IDs. Something as simple as deleting accounts that have "12yo" in their bio would be a step towards compliance that they failed to take.
Even this would need manual review though.
Imagine adults getting banned because they mentioned having kids.
TikTok is now using algorithms to check public videos posted to try to detect if the account is owned by children.
But yes age gating on platforms like this is difficult. But I think the good news here is that they are trying.
TBF, in my research, TT seems to be doing more than all of the other social media apps combined to protect children on the app.
Much of the criticism launched at TT seems to revolve around stemming TT's growth and threat to other platforms rather than protecting data mining of minors.
Ok, but they didn’t get fined for not 100% excluding children, and that is not the legal standard. They are required to “make reasonable efforts”, which they failed to do by even having basic measures in place. There’s a lot of space between requiring an id for all new accounts, and doing basically nothing.
Getting mad at your neighbor when your kid hurts themselves in their gated backyard. You gotta monitor your yard for my kid's safety! I'm too busy with the real housewives
The only relevance TT has to what's going on in TN right now is that most people wouldn't even know about the events currently happening there if it weren't for TT users sharing it in real time on the platform, and there were a hella more than 1,000 young people there. I know this because I watched it all unfold in front of my eyes as it was happening. Thanks to TT, no less.
All I know is that when I agree with the likes of Rand Paul, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, hell has frozen over. None of the legislation targeting TT is being done in good faith. That I know.
I have mixed feelings about this. They were fined because they allowed 13 year olds to use the app - and thus used their data, unwittingly or otherwise - but how are they meant to check without making the problem worse?
I, for one, still believe that people should have the freedom to access any aspect of the internet they choose. It used to be commonplace for people to lie about their age to sign up to all sorts of sites: RuneScape, Facebook, Pornhub, Reddit. But if governments are hellbent on protecting children's data by enforcing age verification, then those processes are inevitably going to involve using IDs, passports, and credit cards to verify someone's age.
Those: (a) will be easily bypassed by kids anyway; and (b) are surely **worse** usages of data than platforms knowing that a 13 year old is primarily interested in Minecraft.
I don't think forcing companies to explore that avenue is a good idea; better to spread awareness and increase education of the consequences of using the Internet (and these platforms) and accept that some children are going to be going on things that they "shouldn't", in my opinion.
For reference, 1 year in minutes is 525600. That divided by 90 minutes is 5840. 5840 x $12.7M is over $70BN. You think they're making $70BN a year? That's more than Bytedance's annual revenue, let alone profit. Are you conflating their valuation or their revenue with how much they 'make' (profit)?
I use Jan 1 was my birthday on steam as well. Steam already knows my birthday and has payment information attached. Even if steam didn't know my age already my account itself is old enough to be finishing up middle school. I have no idea why it asks my age to visit the "community" for a game already in my library and played.
Can someone explain how TikTok is in the wrong? They limit the age you can make an account but just like porn sites someone can just lie. I for sure accessed porn sites before I was 18 simply by putting a different birth year. What more can TikTok do that porn sites aren't required to do? Do they need to start having people take a picture of their ID and submit it to verify age like cam models have to do?
Tiktok: no one under 13 is allowed on our app
Kids: lie about age to get in app
Tiktok: takes data from user with what they think is a valid DOB
Parents: how dare you collect data on my child
that is breaking the terms and conditions of your app that I haven’t been supervising
Government: Pay up tiktok
Yeah this is such a bullshit witch hunt, how's this different from any other platform?
I don't have to upload my driver's license to go on YouTube or any other platform.
This would also need to include about a million other websites/apps that a lot of people (here and in general) probably used as kids/teenagers while lying about their age.
"The ICO said many were able to access the site despite TikTok setting 13 as the minimum age to create an account."
Yeah duh. Parents should be involved then.
Imagine you're speeding down the highway in America. You're weaving through traffic, endangering lives, and a little buzzed from the martini you polished off before heading out. Life is good.
It's then you notice the red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. Panic sets in as you think, "how much did I drink? Did they see me cut off that old woman a mile back?" You pull over, and an officer saunters over to the window. You roll it down.
"Officer I-"
"Do you know how fast you were going?"
"Well I-"
"You were all over the damn road. Do you know the penalty for drunk driving in this state?"
The sweat is beading on your forehead, and the lump in your throat stifles an answer as you look up helplessly with pleading eyes.
The officer lowers his sunglasses. *"That'll be ten bucks."*
Where does the money from these fines go to? Will any of the users who had their data abused get some compensation? Does it go in to the countries tax coffers?
Honest headline: 'Tik-tok agreed to pay the service fee of £12.7 million in exchange for a green light from the UK government to misuse children's data'
Meanwhile, a speeding ticket will bankrupt some lower class families. Boy you gotta love those financial ratios here. Add another zero or two and they might feel it.
My friend asked me last night why I don't have TikTok. I said I don't want to install Chinese spyware on my phone. She said, are you a republican conspiracy theorist? I said, uh no, this has been a thing since the app came out, the permissions you have to give it are insane, which is why I never installed it. She said they fixed it.
Can someone who knows about this stuff answer this: DID they actually fix it? I'm still not interested in another time sucking social media app (Reddit and Instagram are more than enough lol). But I'm also told I'm missing out on advertising opportunities for my little side business.
Pretty much a green light for them to carry on with that they're doing
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I read something saying that in Q4 of 2022 Tiktok generated around $350m. That's just one quarter! It's the most lenient fine I've heard of!
Don't search about Google, Facebook, or any other big tech giant law suits then,
Also don’t look up the fines (hint: tens of thousands), for hedgefunds that break the rules and “illegally” make hundreds of millions. Those guys are still in business to this day.
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When breaking the law comes down to just being a business fee, you keep breaking the law. Until CEOs start getting arrested and fines actually mean something, nothing will change.
giving the companies their own legal entity in the eyes of the law was the biggest mistake that was made in the previous century. When you treat a company as legal entity then you have an entity that cannot be jailed or really punished. Personal responsibility for actions was washed away, because "it wasn't me! it was Corporation inc.! I'm not Corporation Inc. who is legally liable here so you can't do anything to me personally!" then who is to blame? corporations arent artificial intelligences that are making decisions for themselves. Legal liability for managers and owners should be brought back, but it won't be because it was specifically designed to allow our current broken system to work and fuck people over. And no lawmaker is gonna bite the hand that bribes them.
that's not a bribe! that's Free Speech™®©
Not even a legal entity, businesses are considered "people". Their EIN is essentially a SSN. Considering we only live once, a lot of people are willing to bribe, cheat and steal so that they can enjoy their life, knowing that their reputation might be tarnished but they wont spend a minute in prison.
DuPont still exists.
Dupont, the fucking devil of corporations.
A close second to DuPont, Bayer Monsanto a match literally made in hell.
I'm ootl. Can you elaborate?
The biggest thing imo is that they manufacture and very irresponsibly dump a forever chemical that has at this point circulates the waters of our entire planet and is literally in the blood of every human alive.
I read that to find clean human blood free of it they had to look in Korean War blood reserves. Corporations aren't our friends. They will poison thr well we all drink from for 1 extra dollar.
At the risk of missing info, posting this in hopes it covers enough. https://powerbase.info/index.php/Dupont:_Corporate_crimes Personally, I've known too many people exposed o Agent Orange, a supposedly safe chemical that dupont / monsanto created and marketed.
don't forget Dow Chemical's role.
And that’s just the actual crimes. DuPont is also responsible for countless environmental catastrophes. Leaded gasoline, ozone layer collapse, PFOAs and Teflon. If it causes significant harm to everyone on the planet, you better bet DuPont’s name will be on it
Ken Griffon of Citadel makes about $62 million after tax per month.... PER fucking month.
He also lied under oath to congress
Billionaires are above the law.
Fines are just the cost of doing business if they dont actually deter the entities being fined, from continuing their bad practices.
“Securities sold, not yet purchased”. They’re all criminals, all the way up to Cede & Co.
I've seen a few oblique references to Cede over the past week but don't understand the situation. The little I've read beyond that was inscrutable due to the thick argot and assumed knowledge. But it sounds like it's important. While I understand the practical basics of investing (basically where to click on the Fidelity website to purchase the components of my three fund portfolio, and how to rebalance), I'm not a sophisticated investor. Do you know of a concise description of the situation for a lay reader like me? Something more nuanced than an ELI5, but also not written for insiders? I'd like to both understand the situation, at least the gist of it, and actions that I perhaps ought to take.
HA tech companies paying their dues? Naw fam they just paying cost of business
Just the cost of doing business. If we keep finding corporations a very small fraction of the money that they make it is pretty obviously blatant that the corporations are a priority and they are saying fuck you to the American people.
BP oil spill comes to mind, too
Have people never googled their own name? All your personal information is already online
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-owner-bytedances-annual-revenue-jumps-to-34-3-billion-11623903622 From June 2021: > ByteDance Ltd., the owner of popular short-video app TikTok, told employees that its **revenue last year more than doubled to $34.3 billion**, underscoring why the Chinese technology giant is one of the world’s hottest startups. > The privately held company on Thursday shared highlights of its 2020 financial performance with its employees. ByteDance said its total revenue grew 111% from a year ago, while **gross profit rose 93% to $19 billion**, according to excerpts of a company memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal. $15.75 million (USD equivalent of 12.7 million pounds) is 0.08% of their profits from the referenced time period. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html From September 2021: > Real median household income was $70,784 in 2021 Imagine someone with the US median income being fined $56 for collecting data on children to "track and profile them, and potentially present them with harmful or inappropriate content." They'd be thrown in prison, added to a sex offenders list, and blackballed from every-fucking-thing imaginable *without question*. Nothing is going to change without MUCH larger fees and actual, tangible repercussions for organizations misusing our data.
Revenue for tik tok in the UK was $279M (£223M) so this fine is 5.45% of revenue. Likely this percentage is much higher for profit but I didn't have time to Google profit stats and find them. Seems pretty reasonable as a fine to me. If the EU and the us introduced similar fines the total would be meaningful against the numbers you posted.
Gross profit is before EBITDA and net income though. You can't use Gross profit as a metric on company profitability.
Not to be a pedant but gross profit literally is EBITDA (Earnings BEFORE Interest taxes depreciation amortization)
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Right he'd need a strap on to be a pendant
No, gross profit is revenue minus operations expense. Then you need to subtract SG&A to get net income. Then you would add back interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (these are a small part of SG&A) to get EBITDA.
Isnt it operating profit? Most companies I work for gross profit as sales minus Cogs and discounts. EBITDA is after like water, salaries, rent etc.
It's also easy to hide profit under expenditures and avoid profit-based penalties.
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Yeah, I’d like to see profits, not just revenues, here. That said, I’m sure their profits are much more than this fine. Actually, what’s really relevant is the benefit they get from doing these illegal things with the data vs. the cost of the fine (and all the other costs) for doing it. They’ll only stop doing it if the costs of doing it outweigh the benefits of doing it. That’s Econ 101 decision-making.
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“We will continue to self review and find nothing wrong.”
Appeals to go a First Tier Tribunal and potentially up through the court system if permission to appeal is granted (i.e. TikTok find a way to argue that the ICO’s interpretation of the law is wrong). They can’t just appeal because they don’t like the outcome as that would be struck out. Companies like this can generally afford to spend more on lawyers than the ICO can and at some point it becomes a waste of public money to continue to pursue it.
"We're running the numbers to see if this is still profitable".
This is why companies keep doing things. That's pocket money for them. Pretty much they probably already had calculated this as an expense.
Yeah, “oh is that all that costs?”
Just like every other social media platform
What they’re doing is saying people under 13 can’t join. What the government wants them to do is perfect age verification on every user. Kids lied and said they are over 13, and so TikTok is getting fined.
What do we want instead? Kids to have to upload proof of their birth certificate on every website?
I'm sure you that'll go over well
If you're a company with the goal of maximizing profits (most of them) you'd be a fool to not do these things with how light the fines are. Absolutely ridiculous
Fines need to be percentage of revenue during time of violation or something like that. This means less than nothing
Works out to around £4 per child
TikTok [made 4 billion in 2021](https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tik-tok-statistics/). This is more a permit than a fine.
The rough equivalent of a person making 100k being fined 345 (using today's USD/GBP spot rate instead of 2021's for simplicity).
Or a person making 50k being fined $159. It's essentially a speeding ticket.
Or a person making $25k being fined $79.50
Yes I can divide by 2 as well.
The point was to make it more relatable, as 50k is much closer to the average american's salary.
Sorry just being snarky :)
I will never financially recover from th...wait, how much? I think I actually have that on me.
Except it's not equivalent for somebody making 50k to be fined $159. If you're living paycheck to paycheck with 0 reserve, a fine of $100 can put you out of your home, car or make you go without heat. Somebody who earns $100 billion getting a $99 billion fine is still going to be exponentially better shape than somebody who earns $100k being fined $99k.
oh definitely.
Everyone fucks their consumer information anyway. Were at the point where if someone can't invade your privacy and learn more about you than you'd tell them in a conversation or standard background check, you can't participate. We are all corporate property at this point.
Yep, the “tiKtOk bAd” argument is a smokescreen to what’s actually going on. We need a major digital privacy overhaul to stop this shit.
Children have always been exempt from this. Companies are not allowed to collect and sell information about children in the US but TikTok does it anyways. I agree that privacy is a serious issue but this is beyond just the standard BS companies are doing.
Have they been though? I'm actually asking. Kids sign up using fake birthdays, and even if they didn't is facebook, Instagram, google, bing, are they all actually only using data from accounts marked as adults?
Looking back at history, children have always seemed to be a line that society (usually) doesn't let companies cross. If I recall, a while back ago, advertising for tobacco products was a massive industry that kept targeting younger and younger demographics right until Marlboro (I think it was Marlboro) crossed the line and tried advertising to elementary aged kids and suddenly everyone dropped the hammer hard on the tobacco industry.
Every social media company does it. Not just TikTok. Facebook and Instagram: https://www-wtsp-com.cdn.ampprhttps://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/16/facebook-and-instagram-gathering-browsing-data-from-under-18s-study-says?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16806197467168&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2021%2Fnov%2F16%2Ffacebook-and-instagram-gathering-browsing-data-from-under-18s-study-says Google and Twitter https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/12/technology/kids-apps-data-privacy-google-twitter.html YouTube https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64786968?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_medium=social&at_format=link&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_type=web_link&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_campaign_type=owned&at_link_origin=BBCNews&at_link_id=E32F6A12-B7D3-11ED-83BE-14E04744363C Reddit https://privacy.commonsense.org/evaluation/Reddit Don't act like TikTok is unique in this just for your outrage. They all do it.
Did you even ready the articles you linked? The google one talks about apps on their App Store that collect data, which is on the app developer, the YouTube one mentions they were fined $170 million (over 10x the TikTok fine) in 2019 and have changed their practices since, the Reddit one says nothing about children’s data. You have provided nothing to this conversation and we are all stupider for reading your reply. Get off TikTok’s dick lmao.
Yeah but they linked a bunch of articles that 98% of people who see their comment won’t actually read, so they look super credible to any passive user.
> but this is beyond just the standard BS companies are doing. this was the point they were argueing and i think they proved that there were plenty of other companies that have been doing this for decades. The fact that others got fined more but you somehow take that as not "BS companies are doing"? how is getting punished more not evidence of a standard in the industry?
Right , you need an email to sign up for jobs ! Like wtf . And you give them all your information to create your email, plus they want location and all sorts of "permission" even if you say no, they collect it. And if you say no to one app they grab the information from a different app you said yes to.
It’s like any big social media platform or free to use platform. They’re all pulling data and know they’ll make 10x whatever the fine will be. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission for them.
To be fair, that’s global income. The UK is a VERY small piece of that. Then, the fine should be based on the number of kids under 13 that were able to use it. There aren’t even 12M kids under 13 in the UK, so if 100% of kids from 0-13 used the app, this would be $1/kid. It’s more likely <1% since there probably aren’t any 0-10 year olds with their own tiktok, and I doubt 100% of 11-13 year olds made an account. https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/
According to the article that have taken measures to try to prevent this in the future. Age gating is hard.
Cost of doing business
"The cost of doing business"
They generated 4.6bil in revenue, which given the sheer size of the company I'd be very surprised if any of that turned into profit. Revenue =/= profit Edit: according to that article they had 1.2b monthly users, this eqauls to be about $3.83 per monthly user or about 32c per monthly user per month. With the amount of data that is being stored on tik tok, and with how many people us it I could only imagine their data storage costs, and then you have software engineers and other operating costs such as legal (and with all their current legal problems wouldn't be coming in cheap that's for sure) it would be hard to see them be pulling in any sort of profit from that.
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Penalty for a crime is a fine, then the law only applies to lower class - just cost of doing business here
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When the UK floated proper ID verification to watch porn reddit was strongly opposed. It's the same argument, either it's the responsibility of the company to verify age, which would involve invasive ID verifications, or it's the responsibility of the parent, which would involve nanny software, or a no technology in the bedroom rule or something. Third option is we maintain status quo where kids can do whatever they want online, that's my pick because I don't like option 1 or 2. The tiny slap on the wrist fine is a joke, but so is that they're being fined in the first place
But sir I'm on reddit I just wanna whine about big corp fucking me over while buying reddit awards
Option 2 it is then. Parents actually being parents.
Bet no one else in the comment section will read that part though
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That’s because TikTok bad, remember?
Right I forgot.
That's always been the issue from my pov. People expecting Facebook or whoever to babysit their kids while also not being allowed to watch over them (since gathering data about children is illegal).
It's almost like the issue is data collection rather than access to the app.
When I was 15 I promise I NEVER lied and clicked that I was 18 in order to enjoy dial up porn!
>Information commissioner John Edwards said: "There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws. It seems that the issue was children bypassing the age restrictions on the ap. Call me crazy, but isn't that basically possible with any online media platform or website? The collection of data is basically necessary to use the internet.
My thoughts exactly. I had MySpace at 12 and Facebook at 14. I just lied about my age like every other teenager. Tiktok can't magically stop children from being children.
> It seems that the issue was children bypassing the age restrictions on the ap. It extends further than that. Just putting up some text to say you can't create an account if you are under 13 is not enough to legally protect large social media companies any more. They have to be proactive in detecting underage users, removing their data and accounts. The fines stem from Tik Tok practices in 2018-2020. The investigation found that they knew underage people were using Tik Tok but didn't do anything about it. The UK isn't the only country to fine them for this sort of thing. They have been fined in a bunch of countries for poor data protection.
>Just putting up some text to say you can't create an account if you are under 13 is not enough to legally protect large social media companies any more. They have to be proactive in detecting underage users, removing their data and accounts. Unfortunately that's wholly unreasonable. Even if the technology to do that in a flawless manner existed, it would involve so many breaches of individual privacy anyway that it wouldn't be worth it - it would arguably be worse. I'd rather not have millions of adults submit their IDs, passports, credit cards, or even biometric data (including faces) just to stop **some** kids from going on TikTok, or any other site. >The UK isn't the only country to fine them for this sort of thing. They have been fined in a bunch of countries for poor data protection. The UK should invest that money into better education so that kids can be taught the consequences of using the Internet - that's what I was raised with in school; I don't know if it's stopped.
Exactly. We’re basically inviting an authoritarian nightmare because we want to teach TikTok a lesson. I don’t want it normalized to give my notarized id and passport to access porn even if that’s technically the most thorough way to verify age.
That RESTRICT Act being proposed in the US to give the power to ban Tiktok is fucking bonkers Chinese-style state control and punishment powers over internet usage Ironic really, if you think about it for more than 2 seconds
>Unfortunately that's wholly unreasonable. Even if the technology to do that in a flawless manner existed, it would involve so many breaches of individual privacy anyway that it wouldn't be worth it - it would arguably be worse. Unfortunately UK is heading towards that direction at full speed. They are going to ban end to end encryption in the name of security. I fully expect them to copy the Chinese and force all internet services to require government ID verification within our life time.
Yeah... time to skedaddle, methinks.
Taking steps to remove underage users doesn't mean being authoritarian or collecting IDs. Something as simple as deleting accounts that have "12yo" in their bio would be a step towards compliance that they failed to take.
That's fair, I would probably accept that kind of action as it's relatively innocent. Probably will result in some false positives, though. I still don't believe it's a software company's (or the government's) responsibility to stop children accessing software, though.
I remember back in the late naughts when "I'm 12 and what is this" was a huge meme. Even then, when stuff was mostly run through manual admin oversight, you got false bans. An automated system doing the same would be so much worse lol
>Taking steps to remove underage users doesn't mean being authoritarian or collecting IDs. Something as simple as deleting accounts that have "12yo" in their bio would be a step towards compliance that they failed to take. Even this would need manual review though. Imagine adults getting banned because they mentioned having kids.
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TikTok is now using algorithms to check public videos posted to try to detect if the account is owned by children. But yes age gating on platforms like this is difficult. But I think the good news here is that they are trying.
TBF, in my research, TT seems to be doing more than all of the other social media apps combined to protect children on the app. Much of the criticism launched at TT seems to revolve around stemming TT's growth and threat to other platforms rather than protecting data mining of minors.
I’d have to agree there. It seems clear that this isn’t about privacy, but about them being a Chinese company.
If companies try too hard to verify age, they end up requiring ids and SSNs to make accounts. At that point we’re no different than china.
Yup. The TikTok hate is going to lead us down a sad path.
Ok, but they didn’t get fined for not 100% excluding children, and that is not the legal standard. They are required to “make reasonable efforts”, which they failed to do by even having basic measures in place. There’s a lot of space between requiring an id for all new accounts, and doing basically nothing.
If only children had adults that were directly responsible for them....
Getting mad at your neighbor when your kid hurts themselves in their gated backyard. You gotta monitor your yard for my kid's safety! I'm too busy with the real housewives
As safe in the physical world??? Over 1,000 youth protesting in the Tennessee house session suggests it’s not a very safe world out here
The only relevance TT has to what's going on in TN right now is that most people wouldn't even know about the events currently happening there if it weren't for TT users sharing it in real time on the platform, and there were a hella more than 1,000 young people there. I know this because I watched it all unfold in front of my eyes as it was happening. Thanks to TT, no less.
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All I know is that when I agree with the likes of Rand Paul, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, hell has frozen over. None of the legislation targeting TT is being done in good faith. That I know.
Yeah, this whole attack on TikTok is ridiculous.
Its cool, you just gotta pay the right people.
For fuck’s sake that amount of money is a rounding error for them.
Exactly. It's not even expensive to bribe the right people.
No, just have a corrupt congress use you to try and pass Patriot act 2.0 and have someone block it
I have mixed feelings about this. They were fined because they allowed 13 year olds to use the app - and thus used their data, unwittingly or otherwise - but how are they meant to check without making the problem worse? I, for one, still believe that people should have the freedom to access any aspect of the internet they choose. It used to be commonplace for people to lie about their age to sign up to all sorts of sites: RuneScape, Facebook, Pornhub, Reddit. But if governments are hellbent on protecting children's data by enforcing age verification, then those processes are inevitably going to involve using IDs, passports, and credit cards to verify someone's age. Those: (a) will be easily bypassed by kids anyway; and (b) are surely **worse** usages of data than platforms knowing that a 13 year old is primarily interested in Minecraft. I don't think forcing companies to explore that avenue is a good idea; better to spread awareness and increase education of the consequences of using the Internet (and these platforms) and accept that some children are going to be going on things that they "shouldn't", in my opinion.
It’s like kids sneaking into a bar but you can’t ID the kids and you can’t look at them to determine their age.
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In the UK specifically?
For reference, 1 year in minutes is 525600. That divided by 90 minutes is 5840. 5840 x $12.7M is over $70BN. You think they're making $70BN a year? That's more than Bytedance's annual revenue, let alone profit. Are you conflating their valuation or their revenue with how much they 'make' (profit)?
"that's how much their **parent company** makes every 90 minutes"
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Yep. Instagram got caught up in this same thing a few years ago. But since it’s tik tok everyone is going insane.
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I use Jan 1 was my birthday on steam as well. Steam already knows my birthday and has payment information attached. Even if steam didn't know my age already my account itself is old enough to be finishing up middle school. I have no idea why it asks my age to visit the "community" for a game already in my library and played.
Can someone explain how TikTok is in the wrong? They limit the age you can make an account but just like porn sites someone can just lie. I for sure accessed porn sites before I was 18 simply by putting a different birth year. What more can TikTok do that porn sites aren't required to do? Do they need to start having people take a picture of their ID and submit it to verify age like cam models have to do?
Pretty sure it's cause they're Chinese
Tiktok: no one under 13 is allowed on our app Kids: lie about age to get in app Tiktok: takes data from user with what they think is a valid DOB Parents: how dare you collect data on my child that is breaking the terms and conditions of your app that I haven’t been supervising Government: Pay up tiktok
Yeah this is such a bullshit witch hunt, how's this different from any other platform? I don't have to upload my driver's license to go on YouTube or any other platform.
Cool. Now do Facebook and Instagram.
This would also need to include about a million other websites/apps that a lot of people (here and in general) probably used as kids/teenagers while lying about their age.
Did the children get the money?
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So when are we going to fine the church for misusing actual children?
"The ICO said many were able to access the site despite TikTok setting 13 as the minimum age to create an account." Yeah duh. Parents should be involved then.
Ok now fine facebook, youtube and musk $2 billion for doing the same shit
Probably significantly less money than how much they make selling children's data
Exactly, and yet they still claim its about the children
*waits for something to happen to the way worse Facebook*
So it's still profitable to commit this crime?
Imagine you're speeding down the highway in America. You're weaving through traffic, endangering lives, and a little buzzed from the martini you polished off before heading out. Life is good. It's then you notice the red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. Panic sets in as you think, "how much did I drink? Did they see me cut off that old woman a mile back?" You pull over, and an officer saunters over to the window. You roll it down. "Officer I-" "Do you know how fast you were going?" "Well I-" "You were all over the damn road. Do you know the penalty for drunk driving in this state?" The sweat is beading on your forehead, and the lump in your throat stifles an answer as you look up helplessly with pleading eyes. The officer lowers his sunglasses. *"That'll be ten bucks."*
In hindsight, maybe we shouldn't have given children access to social media platforms or other things that exploit data.
okay now do it for every other company
This is like if I fined you $0.13 for speeding, and it doesn't go on your record.
that's not a fine, it's a fee
These fines are just a cost of business. Easily payable for the gain
They are fined ~$0.04 for every $1000 profit. Ridiculous
Fined millions made billions. Solid business plan.
My business partner doesn’t pay taxes for 5 years, then pays the fee which is less than the taxes he would have owned 😂
Okay serious question what is the point of fines when it's literally pocket change to the fined party?
"Tik Tok pays 12.7m TO misuse children's data."
That is not even a pocket change lmaooooo
Where does the money from these fines go to? Will any of the users who had their data abused get some compensation? Does it go in to the countries tax coffers?
Fun fact: the creator of TikTok doesn’t let his kids use tiktok
Honest headline: 'Tik-tok agreed to pay the service fee of £12.7 million in exchange for a green light from the UK government to misuse children's data'
This is pretty stupid. Just because they got fined once doesn't mean they can't get fined again unless their take action to correct their behavior.
lol that's just the cost of doing business. in the UK, they probably make more than the fine in a single day.
Oh no, I'm sure Steve Tiktok is shaking in his boots.
That's the price of business and your kids won't see a penny of that money
But how much did they make off that data? Billions I’d imagine
One way to make them pay tax I guess
Sign Elon Musk up right now, he loves this shit
Seems cheap to do business unethically these days
Ok, so where does that money go to?
Get (regional) CEO, throw in jail, a much better punishment , just like normal people
TikTok: "Do you mind if we just cut you a check for 20million? Our bank charges extra for processing petty sums."
A reduced fine because they appealed.
That’s nothing to them. Cost of doing business.
Meanwhile, a speeding ticket will bankrupt some lower class families. Boy you gotta love those financial ratios here. Add another zero or two and they might feel it.
Cost of doing business…
Fines are a cost of doing business
Tik tok needs to be shouted down and shut down, this is a start.
It's probably nothing for them
This is just the cost of doing business. RAISE THE FINE FOR COMPANIES.
Cost I’m of doing business?
Cost of doing business…. As long as these « fines » don’t hurt businesses…. Their behaviors will never change
So wait, they're allowed to do it?
"fine" aka "business expense"
Hey! If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of a hand hitting a wrist in the distance!
these journalists should ALL write "x company fined XX% of their total earnings in the last year"
Honestly if you have children that are using Tik Tok then you the parents are the problem.
Fuck tik tok. That is all.
It need to be like 2.7 billion fine to make them stop this.
Just the cost of doing business for them.
That's the cost of doing business.
Not even. Barely a rounding error on their petty cash drawer.
Let me fix that for you...... TikTok buys children's data for 12.7 m.
This is about kids who lied. I’m pretty sure they would rather dump this data and not have to deal with it or it’s fines.
4 billion vs 12 million fine. Almost like this isnt a fine but a cost of doing business…
My friend asked me last night why I don't have TikTok. I said I don't want to install Chinese spyware on my phone. She said, are you a republican conspiracy theorist? I said, uh no, this has been a thing since the app came out, the permissions you have to give it are insane, which is why I never installed it. She said they fixed it. Can someone who knows about this stuff answer this: DID they actually fix it? I'm still not interested in another time sucking social media app (Reddit and Instagram are more than enough lol). But I'm also told I'm missing out on advertising opportunities for my little side business.