The UK’s data regulator has welcomed the decision from a tribunal to reject TikTok’s appeal against as more than £12m fine.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued the fine of £12.7m to the massively popular video sharing platform in 2023, following an investigation that found it had breached UK data law by processing the data of children under the age of 13.
TikTok attempted to appeal this decision in the Upper Tribunal, arguing that its data processing activities served “special purposes”, a term defined in the Data Protection Act as including journalistic, academic, artistic or literary purposes.
If this were found to be true, then the ICO would have had to include additional statutory preconditions in its actions against TikTok, essentially nullifying the original fine.
The Upper Tribunal, however, found that TikTok’s data processing was not for “special purposes”, claiming that simply hosting user-generated content that includes journalistic, academic, artistic or literary value does not meet the threshold.
“We welcome the Upper Tribunal’s decision to dismiss TikTok’s appeal and remit the case to the First-tier Tribunal for determination of the substantive issues,” said Binnie Goh, general counsel at the ICO.
“The Upper Tribunal’s reasoning sets an important precedent for the application of the special purposes provisions in data protection law. While this case concerns TikTok, the Tribunal’s approach is likely to be relevant to other online platforms in similar circumstances.
“We will now continue to defend our original decision before the First-tier Tribunal. We remain committed to ensuring that organisations, particularly those providing online services to children, comply with their data protection obligations.”
