Twenty advocacy groups have accused TikTok of violating child privacy regulations in the US and breaching a settlement that the viral video app agreed with the Federal Trade Commission last year over a previous privacy complaint.
The groups — which include the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center — have filed a complaint with the US watchdog saying they believe that the social media platform is “in contempt” of the terms of the 2019 settlement, as well as children’s privacy regulations.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech group ByteDance, was fined $5.7m in February last year for illegally collecting children’s data, as it began to rise in popularity among teens in the west.