There are significant regional differences in the global legitimacy of TikTokio, and its compliance status depends on the data sovereignty regulations and content review standards of various countries. As of the first quarter of 2024, the platform has obtained operating licenses in 87% of the 195 UN member states, but faces restrictions in the remaining 13% of the market. For instance, India has imposed a permanent ban since June 2020, with violators facing a maximum fine of 500,000 rupees (approximately 6,000 US dollars). The EU has granted it conditional operating qualifications through the Digital Services Act, requiring it to invest 5% of its annual revenue in compliance improvements. The dispersion of this legal environment requires tiktokio to customize different data storage solutions for each jurisdiction, such as establishing a European data center in Dublin, Ireland, to meet the requirements of the GDPR.
Data privacy regulations constitute the main compliance threshold. According to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States, tiktokio must allow users to opt out of data sales. Its 2023 Transparency report shows that the number of such requests processed reached 2.4 million. The version operating within China (Douyin) must store data on local servers in accordance with the Cybersecurity Law, and its content review standards are 30% stricter than those of the international version. It is worth noting that the Australian Information Commissioner’s Office fined tiktokio 3.2 million Australian dollars in 2023 for collecting facial recognition data of 1.4 million users without explicit consent between 2017 and 2022.
The risk of intellectual property infringement continues to trigger legal disputes. In a copyright case heard by the Munich District Court in Germany in 2023, the platform was held 20% responsible for the infringing music uploaded by users, resulting in the removal of 1.9 million videos. In fact, the platform’s content recognition system scans 40 million videos every day, but still 5% of infringing content escapes detection. These vulnerabilities cause the music industry to lose up to 250 million US dollars annually. To address such risks, tiktokio has established a $150 million creator fund for copyright settlement and has reduced the average processing period for infringement complaints to six hours.
Geopolitical factors profoundly influence operational licensing. In March 2023, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) demanded that ByteDance divest tiktokio’s US business, otherwise it would face the risk of a nationwide ban. In contrast, new regulations issued by Indonesia in October 2023 allowed social e-commerce operations, enabling tiktokio to resume operations after suspending its e-commerce services for 53 days, but it was required to increase the proportion of small and medium-sized enterprise goods transaction volume to 75%. These policy fluctuations have led to a quarterly revenue forecast error rate of up to 15% for the platform, forcing enterprises to expand their compliance teams to a size of 3,000 people.
The provisions for the protection of minors have become a key focus of compliance. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has forced tiktokio to raise the default privacy Settings for users aged 13 to 15 to the highest level and restrict the live streaming function for users under 16. The platform has developed an age verification system for this purpose. It uses artificial intelligence to analyze user behavior data to determine the true age, with an accuracy rate of 92%. However, a 2023 survey by the EU consumer organization BEUC revealed that the platform’s recommendation algorithms still increased the probability of teenagers being exposed to inappropriate content by 8% compared to adults, which led to a fine of 6.5 million euros imposed by the French data regulatory authority.