TikTok fined £1.8m after providing Ofcom with inaccurate information

TikTok has been fined £1.8m by Ofcom after providing inaccurate information on its parental controls.

The media regulator found the platform had breached the Communications Act after it failed for months to follow through with the data request. 

Suzanne Cater, Ofcom’s enforcement director, said: “Ofcom’s job is to scrutinise platforms’ safety features, and gathering information is a critical part of holding tech firms to account. When we demand data, it must be accurate and submitted on time. We won’t hesitate to take enforcement action if any company fails to do this.”

Ofcom had initially asked TikTok for data on its family pairing measures in September. The function allows parents to link their TikTok account to their child's account and customise safety settings.

The data was intended to inform an Ofcom report on the children's safety measures video-sharing platforms have in place. 

TikTok initially provided the information last September, however in December it told Ofcom the data it had provided was inaccurate. The platform added it had begun an investigation to understand the root cause of the inaccuracies.

In response, later that month, Ofcom launched a separate investigation into whether the company had failed to comply with its duties to respond to a statutory demand for information, which by law it is required to do.

Ofcom’s investigation found a number of failings in TikTok’s data governance processes.

It noted the company had insufficient checks in place and that the social media platform had taken three weeks to notify Ofcom of the issue after identifying it.

It then committed to providing the information from an alternative data source and finally gave the accurate, albeit partial, data towards the end of March, seven months after the initial request.

The months-long delay disrupted Ofcom’s child safety report, the regulator has confirmed.

A TikTok spokesperson said: “We inadvertently provided inaccurate information to Ofcom regarding the use of family pairing in the UK, which significantly undercounted the actual number of people using this pioneering parenting tool.

“While we subsequently provided the correct information, we fell short of our obligations by not reporting the error sooner, and apologise for any disruption this caused.

“We are committed to fully cooperating with all of Ofcom’s requests and have implemented improvements to our internal processes.”