Turkey Fines TikTok for Allowing User Data To Be Used Unlawfully

Turkey has fined the social media platform TikTok 1.75 million lira, or $93,000 for not protecting its users from unlawful use of their data. The decision to issue the fine, announced Wednesday by Turkey’s Personal Data Protection Board, or KVKK, was taken against the platform for “not taking all necessary measures to ensure the appropriate level of security to prevent unlawful processing of personal data.” Turkey has the ninth most users of TikTok in the world, with some 30 million accounts, Reuters reported, citing data from Statista. The data protection board said in a statement that TikTok should translate its Terms of Service into the Turkish language and update its privacy and cookies policy texts in line with the country’s regulations. Access to TikTok was limited in Turkey in the days following the massive earthquake last month, as well as to other social media platforms; while the government said it was due to technical problems, the internet-monitoring group NetBlocks suggested that it was due to government censorship. Government institutions in Europe and Canada have banned TikTok from the phones of their staff members, and the United States is considering a bill giving President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok.