抖音海外版被控侵犯儿童隐私，遭FTC开出570万美元罚单 – Jiemian
What happened: US authorities fined Chinese short-video app TikTok $5.7 million on Wednesday. TikTok, operator of the now-defunct Musical.ly, illegally gathered personal information from children under the age of 13 without parental consent. The ruling by the Federal Trade Commission is so far the largest civil penalty issued by the agency in a children’s privacy case.
Why it’s important: The massively popular app owned by Bytedance has been under intense fire in recent months for issues over child protection. Child advocates issued warnings over the weekend that abusers are exploiting the app to contact youngsters. Last week, Indian lawmakers sought to ban the app for spreading harmful and vulgar content. As TikTok grows in popularity, it is narrowing the gap with Facebook with more than one billion downloads on iOS and Android, but its rapid ascent has been tempered by concerns over its content and user privacy.