TikTok Receiving Class-Action Lawsuit Backed By UK Child Commissioner
TikTok, the video-sharing social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance is to be sued as part of a high court class-action-style lawsuit. This news comes from The Register and is due to be published by England’s Children’s Commissioner.
The self-called “British technology regulator”, the Children’s Commissioner, is backing an anonymous 12 year-old girl from London in this suit. Mr Justice Warby took the unusal move by handing this down in a case brought by “SMO” towards Tiktok, Bytedance & Musical.ly on the 30th December.
Even more abnormal, it seems that, despite the Children’s Commissioner being a public, state-funded body, the lawsuit is funded by private backers who will cream off a portion of the payout to line their own pockets, with them running the lawsuit on behalf of this 12-year-old girl.
“The intention is for the claimant, through the Commissioner, to bring a representative action pursuant to CPR 19.6, claiming those remedies on behalf of the claimant and all other children under 16 years of age who are or were users of TikTok and/or Musical.ly,” said Mr Justice Warby in his judgment.
No further details of what the case is about were included in the English judgment, however. a similar case is also going through the US courts. A 2019 filing [PDF] revealed the mothers of two children sued TikTok and Bytedance. It stated: “Defendants, in a quest to generate profits, surreptitiously tracked, collected, and disclosed the personally identifiable information and/or viewing data of children under the age of 13 — without parental consent — while they were using Defendants’ video social networking platform.”
it carried on stating that the children were “being stalked on-line by adults”, which the two children’s mothers associated with the fact that they were not being asked for parental consent before their kids signed up.
Returning to the present British case against TikTok, there wasn’t anything in the current judgment indicating who is funding the case or how much they hope to earn from bankrolling it.
A TikTok spokesperson told The Register: “Privacy and safety are top priorities for TikTok and we have robust policies, processes, and technologies in place to protect all users, and our younger users in particular. As this application was made without notice, we first became aware of the application and the High Court’s judgment when it was filed and are currently considering its implications.”
