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 the punishment for a crime is a fine, then it’s only a crime for poor people and small businesses.
We need to see prison sentences for anyone involved in making the decisions to commit crimes and the platform needs to face banishment.
Like speeding tickets.
As a rich person you are fine to endanger the rest of the people on the road for a small fee. As a company it is fine to violate laws and rights of people for a small fee.
It’s cool as long as the government gets their cut!
Income based fines need to become the standard everywhere. Like here in Finland a businessman got fined 121000€ for going 30km/h over the speed limit.