A European Union privacy watchdog fined TikTok 530 million euros ($600 million) on Friday after a four-year investigation found that the video sharing app’s data transfers to China put users at risk of spying, in breach of strict EU data privacy rules.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission also sanctioned TikTok for not being transparent with users about where their personal data was being sent and ordered the company to comply with the rules within six months.
↫ Kelvin Chan for AP News
In case you’re wondering what Ireland’s specific role in this case is, TikTok’s European headquarters are located in Ireland, which means that any EU-wide privacy violations by TikTok are handled by Ireland’s privacy watchdog.
Anyway, sounds like a big fine, right? Let’s do some math.
TikTok’s global revenue last year is estimated at €20 billion. This means that a €530 million fine is 2.65% of TikTok’s global yearly revenue. Now let’s make this more relatable for us normal people. The yearly median income in Sweden is €34365 (pre-taxes), which means that if the median income Swede had to pay a fine with the same impact as the TikTok fine, they’d have to pay €910.
That’s how utterly bullshit this fine is. €910 isn’t nothing if you make €34000 per year, but would you call this a true punishment for TikTok? Any time you read about any of these coporate fines, you should do math like this to get an idea of what the true impact of the fine really amounts to. You’ll be surprised to learn to just how utterly toothless they are.
TikTok has gained notoriety for being vulnerable to manipulation by hostile state actors who have an interest in destabilizing liberal democracies. It also dumbs down its user base by making people addicted to brainrot. Why is it even allowed to operate at this point? No, freedom of speech does not apply to foreign adversaries and content that undues years of public investments in education.
TikTok has gained notoriety for being vulnerable to manipulation by hostile state actors who have an interest in destabilizing liberal democracies. It also dumbs down its user base by making people addicted to brainrot. Why is it even allowed to operate at this point? No, freedom of speech does not apply to foreign adversaries and content that undoes years of public investments in education.
FriendBesto,
I am not fan of tiktok, they deserve punishment for flouting the rules. However on matters of free speech I think we need to tread very carefully before shutting down a platform especially as governments become more authoritarian. If we carve out exceptions to free speech, all it takes is for a president to lie and use these exceptions as a meritless bullshit pretense to threaten the media and make them think twice about allowing their journalists to remain independent and critical.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/media/trump-cbs-lawsuit-harris-60-minutes-interview/index.html
https://apnews.com/article/60-minutes-cbs-producer-quits-4c7729507684fa516391a7022d27586b
The pressure is very real. We even see non-journalists being detained and deported as enemies of the state over their speech. Free speech has always been important, but I think this is one of the most critical issues of our time. If we fail to stand up for free speech in general, I suspect government censorship will get ugly really quickly.
I do appreciate the point you are making, there’s a lot of disagreeable crap out there. Yes even crap we’d be better off without. However I think authoritarian regimes are more dangerous at this point and if we give them the means to go after groups we dislike, then it’s only a matter of time before the scope snowballs and they’ll use it against us. We’ll have only ourselves to blame because we will have helped enable and normalize government censorship.
In the news today, trump signed an order to stop public funding of public media…
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/media/trump-cpb-pbs-npr-funding-cut-hnk-intl
This on top of earlier actions to pressure the FCC to revoke broadcaster licenses. It’s an all out war on free speech. These are the actions of a fascist. I am extremely concerned about these government threats to our freedom of speech. Unfortunately I think that calling on the government to shut down social media sites, even those that we dislike, will only embolden the government to control more of the internet. If we want freedom of speech to survive long term, we have to protect it for everyone. Otherwise our divisions will provide an opening for more fascist control.
The impressive thing here, is that in just 4 paragraphs (or really, just the single third paragraph,) Thom has managed to outperform basically ALL corporate media covering this, by making the impact of this fine immediately understandable. It’s a 2.65% tax – less than VAT, less than American sales taxes.
CaptainN-,
It’s not supposed to be a fine on revenue earned outside of europe though. The €530M fine really should be compared against tiktok’s european revenue. I don’t know what that is, but it’s likely to be a far more substantial percentage. The government’s responsibility is to get compliance in europe, not to take out the whole company worldwide. As the fines approach the level of revenue made in europe, then it’s going to become much less viable to operate without compliance. It’s unlikely that they’re going to want to use profits in the rest of the world to cover European losses even if they could afford it. And if there is further non-compliance the government can and should increase the fine next time.
“Anyways” (c) Tony, compared to their GLOBAL revenue, it is still almost nothing. Because I don’t think the GLOBAL management will change much after this but with cosmetic changes to make it look like they are complying with the requested changes.
You really believe they’ll cut data export to China just because of this ? And what about USA companies (Meta & Cie) importing data from Europe ? If fined by the EU (*IF*) do you think they’ll leave this amount of data to the competition ?
Kochise,
If the courts are serious, and I don’t have a reason to question that they are, then I expect tiktok will either have to comply to the satisfaction of the court or get kicked out. Do you see another option where they don’t comply and they don’t get kicked out?
I’m not privy to how much facebook & others are in compliance or not in compliance. US companies are used to getting their way, it will be up to european courts to make sure they comply as well. The apple case, although not finished, gives an indication that the EC aren’t playing around.
According to Grok it should be around €3000M. That’s 18%.
jgfenix,
Thanks for the info!
I have no idea if Grok’s LLM is trustworthy, but it seems reasonable.
Yeah… no.
European revenue != Worldwide revenue
Revenue != Profit (anyone who says a company “makes” an amount that is their revenue is being misleading, at best)
Further, this is a 4 year old case. Last year’s revenue isn’t relevant.
Shouldn’t it be “maths”? The random mixing of American and International English on this site is not very good for a supposed professional translator.
How much the aggrieved are going to get from this? As usual the biggest scammer is going to pocket the money and defraud it to support various shady foundations and police actively defending and supporting foreign gangs?