Ofcom has fined TikTok £1.875 million for failing to accurately respond to a formal request for information about its parental controls safety feature.
Under the Communications Act 2003., organisations regulated by Ofcom must respond to all statutory information requests from Ofcom in an accurate, complete and timely way. This includes providing accurate and complete information.
Ofcom sought information under the video sharing regulatory regime (which pre-dates the UK’s Online Safety Act), to inform a report which highlights the safety measures they have in place to protect children from harmful content. Ofcom asked TikTok to provide data on take-up of its parental controls feature, “Family Pairing”. This information was important in helping Ofcom to assess its effectiveness in protecting teenage users and was to be published to help inform and empower parents to make decisions about which platforms they and their children use.
TikTok responded to Ofcom’s information request on 4 September 2023. On 1 December 2023, TikTok highlighted that the data it had provided was not accurate and that it was conducting an internal investigation to understand the source of its inaccuracies. As a result, Ofcom launched an investigation on 14 December 2023 about whether TikTok had failed to comply with its duties to respond to a statutory demand for information. It also considered whether TikTok had cooperated fully.
The investigation uncovered several failings in TikTok’s data governance processes. It had insufficient checks in place leading to an inaccurate data submission and TikTok was slow in alerting Ofcom and taking steps to rectify this.
The investigation concluded that TikTok failed to fully cooperate with Ofcom’s statutory request for information in producing the Child Safety Report.
Ofcom has confirmed that TikTok has contravened its duties under the following sections of the Act:
- section 368Z10(6): a duty to provide information in such manner and form and within such reasonable period as may be specified by Ofcom in a demand for information under section 368Z10;
- section 368Y(3)(b): a duty to comply with a requirement for information under section 368Z10; and
- section 368Y(3)(c): a duty to fully co-operate with Ofcom for the purpose of (i) producing a report under section 368Z11 (as referred to at section 368Z10(3)(h)); and (ii) for the purpose of monitoring which of the measures set out in Schedule 15A are taken by video sharing platforms and how those measures are being implemented (as referred to at section 368Z10(3)(g)).
As a result, TikTok was fined £1.875 million. Ofcom considered several factors when deciding the level of the penalty. These included:
- TikTok is a large, well-resourced company, which is well aware of its regulatory obligations;
- the data inaccuracies and delays had a direct impact on regulatory work; but
- this is the first time that TikTok has been found in breach of Ofcom’s rules.
