TikTok is being hit with a €500 million fine—roughly $554 million—for secretly moving the personal data of European users straight into China, where engineers had access.
This comes from an investigation run by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which acts as TikTok’s main regulator in the EU. The penalty is a punishment for breaking the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and is expected to land before the end of the month, according to Bloomberg.
The GDPR makes it illegal for companies to send data out of the European Union without strong protections in place. The Irish regulator says ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, broke that rule by letting its Chinese engineers access EU data.
The fine, which still isn’t finalized, could end up being the third-largest privacy penalty Ireland has ever handed out after Meta got slapped with €1.2 billion and Amazon took a €746 million hit. TikTok can appeal the ruling in Irish courts, but the decision stands for now.
As part of the decision, Irish officials are expected to give TikTok a specific deadline to shut that pipeline to China.
Privacy groups have long warned about China’s surveillance practices and said countries like the U.S. and Europe need to be more aggressive about stopping their citizens’ info from getting caught up in that system.
Back in September 2023, the same Irish regulator hit the company with another €345 million fine. That time, it was over how TikTok mishandled data linked to children. The regulator has made it clear they’re watching how Big Tech handles any European data that leaves the bloc. They also fined Meta a record €1.2 billion for failing to keep personal data safe from American intelligence agencies.
The case against TikTok actually began in 2021, when Helen Dixon, who ran the Irish commission at the time, raised the alarm. She said data from EU users was getting scooped up by “maintenance and AI engineers in China.”
That kicked off a multi-year investigation that’s now led to this latest penalty. The commission said it found clear proof that TikTok let ByteDance staff in China see user data, even though those users lived inside the EU, where strict data rules apply.
The fine also comes as ByteDance is dealing with a completely different crisis on the other side of the world. The United States has given the company until April 5 to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations—or get banned from the country altogether. With that deadline just days away, big players are lining up to buy the app.
Amazon is one of the most recent to throw in a bid. They submitted their offer to the White House to take over a business that’s reportedly been worth as much as $60 billion. Another bidder, AppLovin, is also trying to grab the app and is currently looking for financial backing.
The list of possible new owners in the U.S. is growing fast, and no one’s sure yet who will win out. But this forced sale isn’t slowing down regulators elsewhere. The Irish ruling shows ByteDance is in deep trouble not just in Washington but all across Europe too.
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