A 12-year-old girl is hoping to take legal action against the video-sharing application TikTok. A court has ruled the girl can remain anonymous if the case goes Ahead. The Company claiming uses children’s data unlawfully. By Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England is being supported that the action. She believes TikTok has broken the United Kingdom and European Union data protection laws.
TikTok said it had “robust policies” in place to protect children and did not allow under-13s to join.
Ms Longfield children’s commissioner for England hopes the case will lead to greater protective measures for under-16s who use TikTok in England and possibly beyond.
She believes the application collects and processes children’s data to power its video recommendation algorithm, to capture viewers’ attention and generate advertising revenue.
The commissioner told the High Court in London via a video link that she hoped it to would ultimately issue an order forcing the firm to delete the child’s data, setting a precedent.
But the focus of the preliminary hearing was to decide whether the 12-year-old girl could make a claim anonymously.
Mr. Justice Children’s Commissioner for England Warby judged that the girl risked being cyber-bullied by other children and TikTok users if her identity was revealed.
He said she could face “hostile reactions from social media influencers who might feel their status or earnings were under threat”.
The children’s commissioner for England Ms Longfield is waiting for the conclusion of a data protection case against Google before deciding whether to sue TikTok.
TikTok said that to his statement “Privacy and safety are top priorities for TikTok and we have robust policies, processes, and technologies in place to protect all users and our younger users in particular.
As this application was made without notice, we first became aware of the application and the High Court’s judgment and are currently considering its implications.
The applicable terms and conditions state the service is not available to under-13s and when they signing up all users it will ask their age. It actively reviews and removes accounts that appear to be used by under-13s.
In the year 2019, the video-sharing application TikTok was fined $5.7m by the United States Federal Trade Commission for its handling of children’s data.
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