The Brazil government has petitioned social media firm, TikTok, the sum of $30 million over allegations of failure to implement child safety measures on account of children under the age of 16.
The country’s data protection agency disclosed that TikTok failed to have accounts of the teenagers linked to their parents, as directed by the government, in a bid to prevent the adolescents from accessing the platform and having their data processed to further enhance the safety measures.
The country’s Data Processing Authority, ANDP, stated on Tuesday that the fine figure, equivalent to 153.7 million Reais, is a powerful signal to other platforms to register its seriousness, hoping that its message over its disapproval of the act.
The ANDP enforcement officer, Fabricio Lopes, disclosed that the agency had popular streaming platform, Discord, to suspend livestreams and video calls after a teenage girl was allegedly negatively encouraged to commit suicide during a broadcast.
Its Director, Lorena Coutinho, said that the agency had, last week, initiated proceedings to verify the compliance of 22 social media networks and platforms and a law being passed to protect children and teens online.
Coutinho added that TikTok had committed to suspend all adverts for users who are not logged in, after which it was required to automatically apply stricter privacy settings to the teenagers accounts, but stated that the online platform had not immediately responded to the requests.