On January 22, the Italian Data Protection Authority ordered the immediate blocking of the use of data by TikTok users whose age has not been ascertained. The emergency measure was decided after the newspapers and the Palermo prosecutor's office had linked the death of a child to the use of the social network – which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance and is used mainly by teenagers to share videos – without, however, for now there are official confirmations on what really happened.
The supervisor's decision was also much discussed because it was presented in the media as a “block of TikTok”, which suggested that the app would have been seized, or made inaccessible in some way. Not so: for now TikTok has never stopped working, exactly as it did before the provision of the guarantor. Here we try to explain what it is, what could happen in the next few days and what the consequences will be.
What the Guarantor wants from TikTok
The Guarantor accused TikTok of not having supervised enough to prevent people under 13 and 14 from signing up to the social network , respectively, the minimum age of access, defined by TikTok itself, and the minimum age to consent to the commercial processing of personal data, decided by Italian law. This criticism is not new: the Guarantor had already made it in December 2020, when he accused TikTok of paying little attention to privacy in general and to the protection of minors in particular, denouncing, among other things, the ease with which even minors 13-year-olds could enroll. The news case in Palermo, however, led to believe that an emergency measure was necessary, as Guido Scorza, one of the members of the Board of the Guarantor, who is the supervisor of the provision, told the Press.
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In the provision, the Guarantor imposed on TikTok a “provisional limitation” on the processing of data “of users who are on Italian territory for whom there is no absolute certainty of age”. It means that TikTok must find a way to ascertain as safely as possible the age of the users, and at the same time must stop the processing of the data of those users on which it is not possible to make any assessment. Interrupting the processing of data means, in practice, preventing users with an unverified age from publishing new content. The ban in theory should last until February 15, and after this date the Guarantor will make new assessments.
The notable issue is that Scorza has made it known (he reiterated it also speaking with the Post) that the Guarantor will not be satisfied with the fact that TikTok asks users for their date of birth at the time of registration, as already happens: this system it's too easy to get around, a child under 13 would just need to put a false date to access the social network. The Guarantor expects TikTok to propose another system to verify the age of users, more effective.
According to the GDPR, the European Union law on the protection of personal data, it is up to the company to make a proposal, but Scorza has put forward some fairly general hypotheses, recalling that the Guarantor asks for age verification, not identity verification: “The hope is that these platform managers can use the data they already have to somehow be able to verify, if not the age, at least the belonging of a user to an age group”. Scorza refers to the fact that, using the data obtained from users, the platforms are often able to infer various personal information, such as gender, age group, place of residence. This new identity verification system, however, should be based on the data already legitimately in possession of the platform, to avoid that “in an attempt to resolve a violation of privacy, we end up activating another”.
Applying such systems to TikTok could be costly both from an economic and a technological point of view.
Because there have been no changes to TikTok for now
The media's use of the term “TikTok block” has created some misunderstanding. The company has not yet applied the provision of the Guarantor and is “analyzing” it, as stated in a press release sent to journalists. This means that there has been no change on the platform so far, and that everything continues to work as before.
What will happen in the next few days
The Guarantor expects its measure to be applied as soon as possible, but it is likely that TikTok, after analyzing the situation, will seek to open negotiations to resolve the situation with an agreement. This could already happen in the next few hours or days: it is expected that the company will send a public response, perhaps announcing or applying some change in the direction requested by the Guarantor, and that then a dialogue will begin from there, which could also last a long time. weather.
There are two other possibilities: that TikTok decides to challenge the decision of the Guarantor in an ordinary court (it has the right to do so within 30 days from the issuance of the order) or – but it is very unlikely – that it will not respond, forcing the Guarantor to take action. .
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If TikTok does not adapt, will the service be “blocked”?
TikTok should not interrupt the service and it should not stop working, even if it does not fulfill the requests from the Guarantor. According to the GDPR, the guarantor authorities of the member countries have only the power to sanction platforms that violate their provisions, therefore to issue administrative sanctions, and not the power to seize or somehow obscure their online presence.
However, the fines would be very high. The maximum amount reaches four percent of the global turnover of the fined company. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, is estimated to have had a turnover of 22 billion euros in 2020. The maximum fine would therefore amount to just under 900 million.
The Italian Guarantor, however, cannot fine TikTok alone. In fact, the company is based in Ireland, and according to the GDPR the competence lies with the Irish authority, which should “set up an autonomous procedure that has as its object the violation by TikTok of one of our orders”, explains Scorza. In practice, the Irish Guarantor should open a whole new investigation into the Italian case, hearing all the parties involved and making a decision.
Furthermore, the Guarantor can make a report to the judicial authorities for the crime of non-compliance with the provisions of the authority. These two possibilities (contact the Irish guarantor and the Italian judicial authorities) would not be an alternative to each other but would rather be complementary, in the event that the Guarantor decides that TikTok is not respecting its provision.
And the other social networks?
For now, the provision of the Guarantor concerns only TikTok, but it is by no means excluded (and indeed it is probable, says Scorza) that in the future others arrive regarding other social networks, whose practices to avoid the registration of minors under 13 are not very different from those of TikTok.
