Big Number
Roughly $500 million. That is how much ByteDance has agreed to pay in U.S. settlements since 2019.
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Key Background
TikTok also agreed to a $92 million settlement in 2022, resolving claims it collected and profited from private user information including facial and geolocation data. The app was barred from collecting biometric and GPS data unless doing so was explicitly disclosed in its privacy policy. Prior to divesting its U.S. operations to American companies like Oracle, TikTok was repeatedly criticized for alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party. Reporting by Forbes also found ByteDance employees improperly used IP addresses and user data to spy on journalists reporting on the company. ByteDance also mishandled data from American companies and top influencers, the latter of which had their sensitive financial information stored in China.
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Further Reading
TikTok Creators’ Financial Info, Social Security Numbers Have Been Stored In China (Forbes)
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TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists (Forbes)