Ofcom fines TikTok £1.875m for providing inaccurate data about parental controls

• TikTok failed to provide Ofcom with accurate information about its parental controls

• Delays in reporting the issue disrupted publication of Ofcom’s child safety transparency report

Ofcom has today fined TikTok £1.875 million for failing to accurately respond to a formal request for information about its parental controls safety feature.

Firms are required, by law, to respond to all statutory information requests from Ofcom in an accurate, complete and timely way. This includes providing accurate and complete information.

In this case, Ofcom sought information from video-sharing platforms under regulations that pre-date the UK’s Online Safety Act, to inform a planned report highlighting the safety measures they have in place to protect children from harmful content.

As part of this process, Ofcom asked TikTok to provide data on take-up of its parental controls feature, “Family Pairing”. This information was not only important in helping Ofcom to assess its effectiveness in protecting teenage users but was also to be published to help inform and empower parents to make decisions about which platforms they and their children use.

TikTok responded to its information request on 4 September 2023. But on 1 December 2023, it admitted that the data it had provided was not accurate and that it was conducting an internal investigation to understand the root cause of its inaccuracies.

Meanwhile, Ofom’s own investigation uncovered a number of failings in TikTok’s data governance processes. Not only did the company have insufficient checks in place leading to an inaccurate data submission in the first place, but TikTok was also slow in bringing the error to light. 

As a result of these failings, Ofcom has fined TikTok £1.875 million, which will be passed on to HM Treasury.