San Francisco (AFP)
ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the TikTok app, has agreed to pay $ 92 million to end legal action over possible teenage data collections, according to court documents viewed by AFP.
If approved by the judge, the deal will be among the "most important" on a data privacy case, according to lawyers for both sides, who came to the solution after more than a year of litigation.
Parents of young users of the social network had filed a complaint in various American states against TikTok, which they accuse of illegally collecting personal information from minors, including images of their faces, to feed the artificial intelligence system of the application.
Ultra popular, especially among teens and young adults, TikTok has built its success on short videos in which users stage themselves (parodies, music, dance, etc.) and on its recommendation algorithms which allow users to discover profiles far beyond their contacts.
"The complainants say that the TikTok app infiltrates its users' devices and extracts all kinds of private data, including biometrics and content that the company uses ... for ad targeting and advertising. profit, "detail the lawyers in documents filed Thursday in a court in Illinois (center).
They also explain that TikTok was weakened by a difficult political context.
Last summer, former US President Donald Trump signed two decrees accusing the platform of sharing confidential information about its users with the Chinese government, and therefore of threatening national security - which TikTok has always firmly denied.
"The victory (of the plaintiffs) was obtained in large part thanks to their insistence on organizing a second mediation at the appropriate time, when TikTok was under immense pressure because of the presidential orders which demanded a quick sale (to American groups, editor's note ) ", note the lawyers.
The agreement establishes the creation of a fund endowed with 92 million dollars "for approximately 89 million members of the group action at the national level".
At the end of January 2020, Facebook had agreed to pay $ 550 million after failing to obtain a dismissal in legal proceedings where the group was accused of illegally collecting biometric data to "identify faces", in violation of a 2008 Illinois privacy law.
© 2021 AFP