TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $92 million to reach a settlement with US users who, in dozens of lawsuits, claimed the popular video-sharing app violated their privacy, illegally collected personal information, and shared the data to third-parties.
The settlement doesn’t mean TikTok is confessing to the crime, but it’s for avoiding what they call a lengthy litigation. Per a statement released to the press, TikTok would instead rather focus their efforts on building a safe, positive experience for its community.
Another allegation from the lawsuits is that TikTok used its facial recognition technology to collect the biometric data of its users and ascertain their ethnicity, gender and other information, under the pretense of safeguarding minors.
From its lack of genuine protection for highly impressionable children to the abovementioned illicit data collection, TikTok sure does land itself in controversies often. The app has more than 100 million users in the US.