seems dumb. there's nothing stopping a child from lying about their age anyways. how about parents who care about such things just block the TikTok app for their children?
if TikTok simply had an age selection box, and if you choose anything under 18 it said "too bad. wait until you're 18", I'm sure all of those children would say, "gee darn it, guess I'll wait" :eyeroll.
This sort of nonsense is why government's are trying to enforce age verification because god forbid your children go on a website or app.
at the end of the day these fines exist because it's easy money for the EU - there's really no way of stopping children from using TikTok, or any social media for that matter but the EU knows that so they fine the companies and keep the gravy train going.
>at the end of the day these fines exist because it's easy money for the EU - there's really no way of stopping children from using TikTok, or any social media for that matter but the EU knows that so they fine the companies and keep the gravy train going.
Actually, the fines exist to make sure laws are respected. Also, the issue wasn't about users lying about their age, it was about underage users signing up for an account and having access to all content, instead of only child-safe content, as other platforms do.
My point is that there's nothing stopping children from having access to all content to begin with because there's nothing stopping children from signing up as an adult.
The correct thing for the EU to do if they actually cared about this is to enforce true validation of ages on social media. This is exactly what's being proposed in the United States, with a 3rd party verification service being required for all social media to actually verify ages.
The law in its current form, both in the EU or United States, is pointless and trivially circumvented. Charging a third of a billion for something like this is so laughable.
> The correct thing for the EU to do if they actually cared about this is to enforce true validation of ages on social media. This is exactly what's being proposed in the United States, with a 3rd party verification service being required for all social media to actually verify ages.
Sure, this can be done already with KYC on the platform. YouTube and Meta already has this.
Even with those mechanisms, Meta still delayed their release for Threads in the EU after getting fined repeatedly and Google still got fined for privacy violations around user location again.
So fineing companies works well. They just need to increase it into the billions of dollars for repeat offenders for them to cave and think again.
> Sure, this can be done already with KYC on the platform. YouTube and Meta already has this.
This is not the case. You can easily create an account on both in the EU as an adult even if you're a child.
You seem to think fining is great, but consider the EU pretty much miss the boat on the internet economy. Consider even the richest country in the EU barely even compares to only California, let alone the entire country of USA. Bolstering their economy and innovation is better than strangling everything with regulation, but to each their own.
if TikTok simply had an age selection box, and if you choose anything under 18 it said "too bad. wait until you're 18", I'm sure all of those children would say, "gee darn it, guess I'll wait" :eyeroll.
This sort of nonsense is why government's are trying to enforce age verification because god forbid your children go on a website or app.
at the end of the day these fines exist because it's easy money for the EU - there's really no way of stopping children from using TikTok, or any social media for that matter but the EU knows that so they fine the companies and keep the gravy train going.