Use TikTok? The Company May Owe You Money
If you used TikTok before October of this year, you may be entitled to a piece of a $92 million settlement of data privacy lawsuits.
TikTok faced 21 suits for its data collection practices, including harvesting the information of many minors. The company was targeted specifically for collecting data unbeknown to users, including from draft, unpublished videos, sharing that data with third parties without users’ consent, and breaking Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act.
TikTok said it was “pleased” by the settlement while denying the merit of the allegations. The settlement applies to about 89 million US TikTok users, and TikTok recently sent out a notification providing people information about potential routes to getting compensation.
There’s good news and bad news here.
The good news is that a major social network was at least partially held to account for rampant and less than transparent data collection and sharing practices. We will see more of these rulings in the future, empowered by consumer awareness on the issue as well as laws such as Illinois’ BIPA.
But the bad news is that $92 million is, like virtually every other Big Tech fine, a slap on the wrist that won’t necessarily change the company’s behavior. Plus, the settlement does not allow TikTok users to recover the data TikTok shared about them in order to monetize their attention. That data recovery process is, however, something we’re facilitating at Reklaim.