TikTok parent company Bytedance sets aside $1 Billion to cover future European data privacy fines as the Chinese company faces a barrage of lawsuits over its mishandling of children’s data
TikTok parent company Bytedance sets aside $1 Billion to cover future European data privacy fines as the Chinese company faces a barrage of lawsuits over its mishandling of children’s data
Bytedance has set aside the ten-figure sum to pay regulatory fines in Europe while facing a barrage of investigations and lawsuits over its handling of young users' data.
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3693467
Chinese social media giant Bytedance was dealt a stinging blow last September when Ireland’s data privacy watchdog issued it a record $370 million fine over its failure to properly safeguard the personal data of children using its app TikTok. New corporate filings suggest that Bytedance expects more fines like this to come. The company has explicitly set aside $1 billion to cover future fines from European privacy regulators.
Bytedance has faced a barrage of lawsuits and investigations from regulators around the world over TikTok’s addictive design, handling of user data and lack of safeguards for teenage users. Only yesterday, the attorneys general of thirteen states and the District of Columbia filed separate lawsuits claiming that TikTok was designed to be used compulsively and had harmed children and teens as a result.
The $1 billion provision for future fines was revealed in corporate accounts for TikTok’s European operations filed this week with the United Kingdom’s Companies House. The accounts also showed that TikTok’s European revenues surged to $4.57 billion last year, up from $2.6 billion in 2022. Its losses have also nearly tripled to $1.3 billion in 2023, up from $512 million.
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The scale of total fines and penalties facing TikTok on the European continent could be even larger than the $1 billion provision in its 2023 accounts. The European Commission opened an investigation into TikTok under the Digital Services Act (DSA) in February 2024. The European Union can fine companies up to 6% of global revenue for breaches of the DSA, or impose a ban.
If you needed additional proof that fines are just the cost of their business model, this is it.
Any company that can set aside $1 billion to cover the cost of breaking the law is obviously not getting taxed enough. Hopefully this causes the EU to fine them more.
The European Union can fine companies up to 6% of global revenue for breaches of the DSA, or impose a ban.
I think this would be a far better solution.
Illégal with a fine means legal with a price
If the company admits that the cost of wrongdoing might be worth a billion dollars, and then still engages in a billion dollars worth of wrongdoing, maybe the fine ought to be two billion