"Loss of control over her personal details": The Chinese social network is facing a new lawsuit - and will be required to prove once again that she does not use personal details • Judge: "The girl's right, whether she is right or not, to go to court"
Photo: AP
A new legal challenge for the Chinese social network: A UK court has authorized a 12-year-old girl to file a lawsuit against Tiktok for "loss of control over her personal details".
The minor prosecutor will not be required to be exposed, and whoever will represent her at trial will be Anne Longfield, Commissioner for Welfare and Child Protection in England.
In fact, the protection given to a child by the court precludes any identification of her.
According to the judge, if the girl's name is published, she may go through campaigns of revenge and shame (shaming) on social networks, and thus go through a campaign of pressure that will make her life difficult and even constitute a barrier to future lawsuits by other children who also want to protect their privacy.
According to her lawyers, the young woman's personal details - like those of other children - are in the app's algorithm, which analyzes the date of birth, place of residence, surfing history and searches and more.
This process motivates users to stay longer in the application, thus increasing advertising revenue.
The British judge, Mark Verbi, ruled that "the girl's right, whether she is right or not, to go to court to sue Tiktok. Denying the girl the right to anonymity would infringe on her right as she would be exposed to a campaign of shame and cyberbullying by other children."
This ruling by the British court is a real gateway to thousands of privacy lawsuits that the company may suffer if it is proven that it does collect illegal information about its users.
It is important to note that already now the EU has set up a special commission of inquiry to examine whether the Chinese social network does indeed preserve the individual and property rights of young users of the network.
The European inspection team is very much endangering the company if it turns out that it violates the property rights and privacy of children, because the organization has the ability to impose draconian fines of billions in such a situation.
Also, it will be recalled that recently the Trump administration accused Tiktok of collecting information about U.S. citizens and imposed a boycott on it - this subsequently filed a counterclaim.
In the parable, Tiktok issued a special statement in which it stated that "the privacy of our users, especially the children, is a priority for the company."
