Brazil Fines TikTok Owner R$ 153.7 Million Over Children's Data Privacy
4 sources across 2 countries · Brazil · United States
Who reported this
- UOL
- Folha de S.Paulo
- Gazeta do Povo
- Bloomberg
What the colours mean
- Left
- Centre-left
- Centre
- Centre-right
- Right
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Brazil's National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) has fined ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, R$ 153.7 million for failures in handling the personal data of children and adolescents. The agency identified five violations of the General Data Protection Law (LGPD) regarding both registered users and those accessing the platform without an account. The ANPD estimated that TikTok may have collected data from approximately 20 percent of Brazilian children in a single year, based on ByteDance's own report that 7.75 million child accounts were removed between October 2022 and September 2023.
A central point of the investigation was the "feed without registration," which allowed users to watch videos and receive personalized recommendations without creating an account. The ANPD found that this feature allowed children to bypass age verification gates. While the platform is restricted to registered users in the United States and the European Union, it remained open to non registered users in Brazil. The ANPD concluded this was a purposeful business decision to expand the user base and enable large scale data processing.
As part of a compliance plan, TikTok must suspend the registration free feed in Brazil. For registered users under 16, the platform must implement more restrictive privacy settings by default and strengthen parental supervision tools. The agency also ordered the deletion of irregularly collected data. ByteDance has ten business days to appeal the decision; if the company waives this right, the fine will be reduced by 25 percent to R$ 115.3 million.
How each side framed it
- Centre-left
- Presented the event as a straightforward regulatory penalty for failures in protecting minors.
- Centre
- Focused on the technical details of data collection and the strategic disparity between TikTok's operations in Brazil versus the US and EU.
- Centre-right
- Emphasized the legal violations of the LGPD and the specific requirements of the mandatory compliance plan.
Sources
- Centre Bloomberg: Brazil Slaps TikTok Owner With $30 Million Fine Over Data Use
- Centre Folha de S.Paulo: TikTok allows access without registration in Brazil, but not in USA and Europe; ANPD sees purposeful decision
- Centre Folha de S.Paulo: TikTok may have collected data from 20% of Brazilian children in just 1 year, investigation shows
- Centre-right Gazeta do Povo: ANPD fines TikTok R$ 153.7 million for failures with minors
- Centre-left UOL: ANPD fines TikTok owner for failures in treating data of children and adolescents
100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.