Tiktok is apparently in trouble after South Korea decided to fine them in their version of the United States Law.
COPPA imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, and on operators of other websites
or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age. (“COPPA”) from the FTC July 19, 2020)
Each country has differing laws, the United States indicates that it is under the age of 13, but other countries may be different.
I recently looked this up once before when I really started questioning whether I was following law as a United States citizen running the non-profit MENVI whereby MENVI is bridging the gap between the blind and music education. We assist children, parents, older adults, and educators to find a ground to stand on when it comes to getting the help they need when educating and learning as a blind person.
We did not cover COPPA in the light of MENVI, but mainly was a research project which was covered on the podcast itself. Searching for COPPA on the blog, indicated a dice world post where it entails, but was more of an opinion piece.
Back to the topic at hand, let’s talk about Tiktok. I am unsure if it is accessible or not, but according to the top paragraph, it is siniliar to Youtube whereby it is a video sharing platform. My question is why children are using the service? Children should be learning in education, not dabbling in applications that could yield consequences if the right person were to find them through the service and have them do things through a chat facility if this service has it.
“We hold ourselves to very high standards on data privacy, and work to continuously improve and strengthen our standards,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
Really? Are you saying that this was a mistake? That is definitely nice to hear that it was a mistake. South Korea is suing them at a 3 percent of revenue for the year. Tiktok is not notifying people what they collect to boot.
After my investigation, it turned out that an attorney advised we create a page in which every member must review before they fill out an application to join MENVI. Wikipedia indicates that Coppa was enacted by the 105th congress effected April 21, 2000. This makes this law 20 years old this year. This is not to be confused with the defunked child online protection act which you can read more about on your time.
According to the FTC link above which links to the text, it is a 1998 law, but I believe it may not have been completely passed until 2000, but I am welcome to be corrected if someone with more knowledge of this would like to come forward.
Back to the article that sparked this discussion, this service knowingly hosted content published by under age children. Under age children is defined by the specific law of the country and may differ from 13 to 14, its advised to look at your law in your country where possible. To play it safe, 13 is the minimum age that MENVI will collect information for its metwork before we start questioning whether its legit based on the parent/child section of our application.
Tiktok later announced that it was leaving Hong Kong, part of China. If you’d like to read more about the latest on TikTok, and whether it is a good idea to use their service, I invite you to read the article. Since I’ve not used this service, I have no idea how it works, but it concerns me that it is a Chinese based company where China can tell companys what to do there including turning off the Internet.
From the BBC, please read: TikTok fined for mishandling child data in South Korea for all of the details and links to other things as well. Have fun with this one!