The Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday it had referred a grievance against the social media platform TikTok and its parent company ByteDance over potential violations children’s privacy to the Justice Department.
In March, a source told Reuters the FTC could resolve a probe into TikTok over allegedly faulty privacy and data security practices by either filing suit or reaching a settlement.
“The investigation uncovered reason to consider named defendants are violating or are about to violate the law and that a proceeding is in the general public interest, so the Commission has voted to refer a grievance to the Department of Justice,” the FTC said in an announcement.
Reuters in 2020 first reported the FTC and the Justice Department were looking into allegations the favored social media app didn’t live as much as a 2019 agreement aimed toward protecting children’s privacy.
“Although the Commission doesn’t typically make public the indisputable fact that it has referred a grievance, now we have determined that doing so here is in the general public interest,” the statement continued, without giving details.
TikTok said Tuesday it has been working with the FTC for greater than a yr to deal with the agency’s concerns.
“We’re disenchanted the agency is pursuing litigation as an alternative of constant to work with us on an inexpensive solution,” TikTok said. “We strongly disagree with the FTC’s allegations, lots of which relate to past events and practices which might be factually inaccurate or have been addressed.”
The probe is separate from ongoing concerns in Congress concerning the potential that the info of TikTok’s 170 million US users may very well be improperly accessed by the Chinese government. TikTok denies the allegation.
TikTok is ready on Thursday to file its legal temporary in its lawsuit difficult a law passed in April that requires its Chinese-parent ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
