TikTok set for €500m superb over sending EU knowledge to China as US sale deadline looms
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TikTok’s parent company is set to be hit with a €500 million (£421 million) fine for illegally shipping European users’ data to China – just days before the deadline to sell the video-sharing app to a US company.
Ireland’s data protection commission, the company’s main regulator in Europe, will slap ByteDance with the whopping fine before the end of April, sources claim.
It comes after an investigation found the Chinese business fell foul of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation in sending the information to China to be accessed by engineers.
The social media giant faces being shut down in the US unless it sells to an American company by 5 April amid fears its ties to the Chinese government poses a national security threat.
The penalty would be be the third highest ever dished out by the Irish watchdog following earlier fines of €746 million against Amazon and €1.2 billion against Facebook owner Meta Platforms, sources told Bloomberg news agency.
But the exact size of TikTok’s fine and the timing of the decision isn’t final and could still change, they added.
ByteDance faces a deadline of April 5 deadline to find a buyer for TikTok’s US operations or see the app banned in the country.
Amazon became the latest big name to jump into the fray, submitting a bid to the White House to buy out the business, which was once valued at $60 billion (£45.5 billion).
Lesser-known AppLovin is also reportedly seeking backing for its own takeover bid. The pair lengthen an already eclectic list of potential owners of the app at the nexus of US-China tensions.
And a third last-minute bidder includes the man once dubbed “the king of homemade porn” – British OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely. His proposed bid coincides with the relaunch of a company he co-founded in 2022.
However, TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance have still not confirmed they are willing to do a deal.
As part of the decision from Ireland’s data protection commission, the regulator will order TikTok to suspend the unlawful data processing in China within a set time frame.
In September 2023, TokTok was fined €345 million for alleged lapses in the way it cares for children’s personal data.
The watchdog has also sounded the alarm over Big Tech firms shipping the personal data of European citizens outside of the 27-member bloc, slapping a record €1.2 billion fine against Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. for failing to protect personal information from the American security services.
The Irish probe into TikTok started in 2021, when the regulator’s then head Helen Dixon claimed that EU user data could be accessed by “maintenance and AI engineers in China.”
The Irish watchdog oversees many of the world’s biggest tech firms, including the activities of much of Silicon Valley due to its role as the industry’s gateway to the 27-nation EU.
Under the GDPR, national agencies where foreign firms have their EU bases take the lead in policing the rules. TikTok can appeal the decision in the the Irish courts.
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