According to Reuters on Friday (December 27), the Moscow court news service announced that a Russian court imposed a fine of 3 million rubles ($28,929.60) on TikTok that day. The reason was that the Chinese-owned social media platform failed to restrict the dissemination of certain types of information in accordance with Russian law.
The court did not specify the nature of the complaints against TikTok.
In recent years, TikTok has faced complaints and investigations in multiple countries.
In the United States, a law was passed in the spring of 2024 requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 19 of next year. If ByteDance fails to divest by the deadline, Google and Apple will stop offering TikTok in their U.S. app stores.
On December 21, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that the short video platform would be banned for at least one year starting in early 2025. Rama stated after meeting with parent groups and teachers from across the country that the ban is part of a broader plan to make schools safer and will take effect early next year.
The European Commission also issued a statement on December 17, indicating that they will investigate whether TikTok is preventing malicious actors from manipulating its recommendation system and whether it is appropriately labeling political content in accordance with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).