Ofcom fines TikTok £1.875m over information sharing breach

The fine followed a request from Ofcom in 2023 for information from video-sharing platforms under regulations that pre-date the UK’s Online Safety Act, with the intention of informing a report highlighting the safety measures they have in place to protect children from harmful content.

TikTok responded to Ofcom’s information request on 4th September 2023, but on 1st December highlighted that the data it had provided was not accurate and that it was conducting an internal investigation to understand the root cause of its inaccuracies.

The disclosure by TikTok saw an Ofcom investigation launched on 14^th December.

By law, firms are required to respond to all statutory information requests from Ofcom in an accurate, complete and timely way, including providing accurate and complete information.

Ofcom’s investigation found several failings in TikTok’s data governance processes, including having insufficient checks in place, which led to the inaccurate data submission, and TikTok’s slow response in alerting Ofcom to the problem.

Ofcom said that the delay meant that, at a late stage, Ofcom was forced to remove details of the effectiveness of TikTok’s parental controls from the report, which the regulator said materially disrupted its work to promote transparency.

TikTok subsequently committed to providing accurate information on “family pairing” from an alternative data source, but Ofcom said that despite it pressing for progress updates, this too was subject to delays.

TikTok ultimately provided accurate, albeit partial, data to Ofcom’s request for information on 28th March 2024 – more than seven months after the original deadline.

As a result of these failings, Ofcom fined TikTok £1.875m, which will be passed on to HM Treasury.

The penalty included a 25% reduction due to TikTok accepting Ofcom’s findings and settling the case.

Suzanne Cater, enforcement director at Ofcom, said: “Ofcom’s job is to scrutinise platforms’ safety features, and gathering information is a critical part of holding tech firms to account.

“When we demand data, it must be accurate and submitted on time. We won’t hesitate to take enforcement action if any company fails to do this.”

A TikTok spokesperson said: “We inadvertently provided inaccurate information to Ofcom regarding the use of family pairing in the UK, which significantly undercounted the actual number of people using this pioneering parenting tool.

“While we subsequently provided the correct information, we fell short of our obligations by not reporting the error sooner, and apologise for any disruption this caused. We are committed to fully co-operating with all of Ofcom’s requests and have implemented improvements to our internal processes.”