TikTok's Parent Company Sued For Collecting Data On Kids (theverge.com) 23
TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is being sued after allegedly violating child privacy laws and collecting the data of young users through the video app, which was formerly called Musical.ly. The Verge reports: ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in 2017, which it later rebranded as the enormously popular social video app TikTok. According to the December 3rd complaint, ByteDance has collected data from Musical.ly users under the age of 13 without their parents' explicit consent "since at least 2014" and sold the data to third-party advertisers. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, forbids social media companies from collecting the data of children without explicit parental consent. Failing to obtain that consent would be in violation of the law and open the company up to potential lawsuits from regulators like the Federal Trade Commission. "TikTok was made aware of the allegations in the complaint some time ago, and although we disagree with much of what is alleged in the complaint, we have been working with the parties involved to reach a resolution of the issues," a TikTok spokesperson told The Verge. "That resolution should be announced soon."
TikTok is also facing a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. that claims it transferred "vast quantities" of user data to China. The lawsuit was filed in a Californian court last week.
TikTok is also facing a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. that claims it transferred "vast quantities" of user data to China. The lawsuit was filed in a Californian court last week.
Re:BeauHD (Score:4, Informative)
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Isn't that the inevitable easy solution for corporations? You can't ban every mean comment because there are too many. Disabled, LGBT, obese, etc are a minority. It's easier to just ban the people the receive mean comments.
How do you get rid of hate speech? Remove the stuff that is hated. It's easier and more cost effective. Problem solved.
This is the fruit born of censorship in the name of protecting against hatespeech. I would laugh at the irony of censorship backfiring if it wasn't sad.
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Mean comments as in "hate-speach" however you want to define it.
> This is akin to kicking a black guy out of a restaurant "for his own safety"
Yea. Because it's cheaper than hiring a private security firm to protect him and decipher between poor taste and racial animus. The issue is the publicity around "you allow hate speech on the platform" and cries from twitter mobs to "do something" about it. Followed with threats against advertisers and revenue streams. Well, the easy solution is to ban the thing t
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Well that took surprisingly long (Score:1)
What about the others? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Google and Facebook are used by most sites to track users. They will stealth-track all users. Even "anonymous" users that never log in. Is an anonymous user of unknown age legal to track, but a known user of under 13 illegal? If it's illegal to track an unknown user under 13, then almost all anonymous tracking is strictly illegal.
If you log in they know your identity. If you don't it's "mostly" anonymous.
All that said apparently tik-tok is a big thing. My 9 year old was talking about it with her friend, then they performed a dance they learned, so i looked it up, it's a social media site, a no no for my 9 year old. Then she told me it's ok i watch it at my friends house and they are OK with it. That's when i explained that i'm not "OK" with it.
Then my 21 y/o comes home from her 3rd year at state college and is obsessed with Tik-To
"Directed to children" defined (Score:4, Informative)
Is an anonymous user of unknown age legal to track
It depends on whether your site's content meets most of the factors listed in 16 CFR 312.2 [cornell.edu] for being "directed to children." There are nine of them, as described with examples in an informational video by lawyer Nate Broady [youtube.com].
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Google isn't immune to prosecution. See for example the recent incident with YouTube and the FTC, where videos deemed "made for kids" are no longer allowed to have comment sections.
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A lot more than that, since anything that requires tracking won't work.
"Likes" on videos - since you can only like a video once, YouTube has to track it, and thus they can't.
"Subscribe" (and associated notification bell) - obvious since it's tied to a YouTube account
Comments - again, tied to an account
Other account things (playli
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All that means that anyone who actually wants to make money off of kids videos is going to mark them not-for-kids so they can actually make money.
FTC fines? Good luck enforcing that - youtube content farms are in many places, and the US is not one of them.
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Hmmm. Why don't we stop calling it "collecting data" and call it what it is - eavesdropping and spying, and treat the companies that are doing it as the ugly pariahs that they are.
In the old days of the POTS with physical circuts, it was illegal to tap a phone call or for anyone but the phone company to monitor endpoint connections. With virtual circuits, it should be just as illegal to spy on the content of the circuits or collect data about endpoint connections.
Selling advertising doesn't require moni
COPPA is bullshit (Score:3)
Not even fake news. (Score:2)
Not news at all.
If you cake, no need to kill yourself. You'rr already dead.
Clarification: I meant "TikTok". Not the kids thin (Score:2)
Obviously. (To me at least.)
Go away (Score:2)