TikTok has lost an appeal against a £12.7m fine imposed by the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The fine was for illegally processing the data of more than 1.4 million children under the age of 13.
The Upper Tribunal ruled in favour of the ICO on Wednesday, upholding the penalty initially issued in April 2023. The ICO had found TikTok breached UK data protection law, the GDPR, by unlawfully processing data from children under 13 between May 2018 and June 2020.
The investigation found the video-sharing platform used children’s data to track and profile them, potentially exposing them to harmful or inappropriate algorithmic content without parental consent, which is required under GDPR for under-13s. TikTok had appealed, claiming its processing fell under “special purposes” for journalistic, academic, artistic, or literary uses, arguing user-generated videos were artistic expression. The court rejected this, stating TikTok's claim was “not sufficient” and it could not prove content was used for artistic purposes.
A TikTok spokesperson stated the company is “carefully considering this judgment.”