Social media platform TikTok has agreed to pay a penalty of US$2.4 million to UK media regulator Ofcom after failing to respond accurately and within a set timeframe to a request for information about its parental controls safety feature.

In this particular case, Ofcom says it was seeking information from video-sharing platforms under regulations that pre-date the UK’s Online Safety Act, to inform a report spotlighting the safety measures that platforms have initiated to protect children from harmful content.

Ofcom requested data on TikTok’s “Family Pairing” parental controls to help it assess how well the platform protects teenage users. The org ultimately found that TikTok had insufficient checks in place, which led to an inaccurate data submission, and the platform was slow in presenting the error and fixing the issue.

“Despite being aware that we intended to include its parental controls data in an imminent transparency report, TikTok did not inform Ofcom about the inaccuracy for more than three weeks after discovering [it],” said Ofcom. “This delay meant that we were forced, at a late stage, to remove details of the effectiveness of TikTok’s parental controls from the report, materially disrupting our work to promote transparency.”

TikTok ultimately provided accurate but partial data to Ofcom’s request for information on March 28, 2024, more than seven months after the original deadline.

The fine will now be moved over to the UK government’s treasury department for collection.