TikTok, along with Reddit and image-sharing site Imgur, are to be investigated by the UK’s data protection watchdog over how they use personal information of teenage users.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) wants to look into how TikTok uses the personal information of 13-17-year-olds to deliver video and text recommendations to them.
The investigations into Reddit and Imgur are focused on how they use children’s personal information and how they estimate or verify a child’s age, which can then be used to tailor their experience on the platform.
The regulator is stepping in due to increasing concerns over how social media platforms use data from children’s online activity in their recommendation algorithms and the risk of young users being exposed to harmful or inappropriate content.
TikTok’s algorithm drives the For You Page, which suggests videos to users based on the content they interact with on the app.
The ICO also introduced a children’s code for online privacy in 2021, which requires firms to take steps to protect children’s personal information online.
Information commissioner John Edwards said that the regulator expected to find plenty of positive safety elements in place across the sites during its investigation, but wanted to ensure their processes were “robust”.
“It’s what they’re collecting, it’s how they work,” he said.
“I will expect to find that there will be many benign and positive uses of children’s data in their recommender systems.
“I would expect to find there will be elements that are designed to keep children safe and to make sure they only get appropriate thing, and that’s all for the good.
“What I am concerned about is whether they are sufficiently robust to prevent children being exposed to harm, either from addictive practices on the device or the platform, or from content that they see, or from other unhealthy practices.”
The ICO said its investigations were to look into whether there had been any infringements of data protection legislation, and if any evidence of potential breaches is found, the regulator said it would put it to the platforms and obtain their representations before reaching a final conclusion.
Mr Edwards said the regulator was “not picking on TikTok” by making it the subject of an investigation on a topic common across social media, and hoped to understand more about the wider social media landscape through the investigation.
“We’ve got to choose one – we can’t spread ourselves too thinly,” he said.
“We’re not picking on TikTok.
“We hope to learn lessons that the whole industry will be able to adopt.
“The selection was made based on the direction of growth travel in relation to young users, market dominance and potential for harm.
“But the underlying technology is what’s interesting to us and that’s present in X, it’s present in (Instagram’s) Reels, it’s present in Snapchat, it’s there across the board on digital platforms.
“Now, they’re all competing for attention and eyeballs, and so they’re using techniques to maximise those.”
TikTok has been contacted for comment.
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