Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/05/tween-surveillance.html
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What gives this company the right to sue and settle? The us govt should be suing them and not settling until the crime stops.
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Yeah. This bit from TFA is a bit baffling:
I mean … yay if you’re from the parents group, I guess. But if your spawn use TikTok and you aren’t in that parents groups^ then, what? You’re just SOL? That doesn’t seem just in any meaningful sense.
Secret agreements between secret groups that end up affecting everyone isn’t a good basis for moving forward.
^ this out-group presumably includes the vast majority of TikTok “users” a.k.a. spied-on-kids.
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The agreement isn’t secret, BB just didn’t link it. The original Verge article had a link to it, but it’s not obvious. It’s here.
It’s also only a proposed settlement. Because this is a class action lawsuit, the court has to approve the settlement. So basically the two parties (TikTok and the parent’s group) have decided upon a settlement they think is fair for all the people affected and now they’re going to court to ask the court to approve the settlement.
It sounds like they’re essentially saying: TikTok will give $1.1M to a neutral third party. That money will be distributed to class members. They estimated there are 6M class members. The neutral third party will advertise ‘hey, if your kid had their data stolen by TikTok then I have some money for you!’ and people will have to come forward and make a claim that they fit that definition in order to get some money. After a while if there’s unclaimed money they’ll go back to court to ask for permission to do something else with it.
I’m not saying it’s a good deal. $1.1M split 6M ways is not much money per person if every one of them came forward. And for TikTok, that’s pretty cheap to get out of a class action.
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