The European Union confirmed that it is organizing several investigations into the data practices of TikTok and the way ads are aimed at minors provided by the company after the US did long before.
The European Parliament member sent a letter that stated, EU users’ data was being sent to China. In response to that letter, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that the Union was investigating Tiktok. Operatives are aiming to confirm that TikTok meets General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) conditions.
“The data practices of TikTok, including with respect to international data transfers, are the object of several ongoing proceedings,” von der Leyen said in her response.
“This includes an investigation by the Irish [Data Protection Commission] about TikTok’s compliance with several GDPR requirements, including as regards data transfers to China and the processing of data of minors, and litigation before the Dutch courts (in particular concerning targeted advertising regarding minors and data transfers to China).”
The social media platform, TikTok has been in the spotlight lately due to the way it handles users’ data. Last month, an article by Forbes claimed that the internal audit and risk control department of the company planned to collect US citizens’ location data. However, TikTok denied those claims saying it never used the platform to target individuals linked to the US government or activists and public figures.
Earlier this year, TikTok had agreed to impose some policies after complaints related to breaching EU consumer rules regarding ads and branded content were circulating.
About Tiktok
TikTok is a social media app that provides its users to create a bit-sized similar to YouTube, with the only difference being the time limit. Recently, YouTube too launched short but sized videos named ‘Shorts’ after Instagram launched reels.
Tiktok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. In China, the app is known as Douyin. The meaning of Douyin in Chinese is a vibrating sound. It hosts a variety of videos submitted by users such as pranks, stunts, tricks, jokes, and dances.
The user interface of Tiktok and Douyin is the same, although it has no access to each other content. Also, their features are different as Douyin includes an in-video search that searches person’s faces for more videos of the particular person, and another feature is buying, booking hotels, and making geo-tagged reviews.
Since its launch Tiktok exceed 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide in October 2020. In 2021 Cloudfare ranked the most popular website to Tiktok exceeding Google. Morning Consult named Tiktok as the third fastest-growing brand after Zoom and Peacock in 2020.
