Venezuela Issues $10 Million Fine For TikTok Over Deadly Viral Challenges

Venezuela's Supreme Court on Monday fined TikTok $10 million for failing to prevent viral challenges allegedly linked to the deaths of three children. It also ordered the platform to establish a local office to oversee content compliance with national laws. The Associated Press reports: Judge Tania D'Amelio said TikTok had acted in a negligent manner and gave it eight days to pay the fine [...]. The judge did not explain how Venezuela would force TikTok, whose parent company is based in China, to pay the fine. Venezuela has blocked dozens of websites in previous years for not complying with regulations set by its telecommunications commission.

In November, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blamed TikTok for the death of a 12-year-old girl who allegedly died after participating in a TikTok challenge that involved taking tranquilizer pills and not falling asleep. Venezuela's Education Minister Hector Rodriguez also said last month that a 14-year-old died after taking part in a TikTok challenge that involved sniffing substances. And on Nov. 21, Venezuela's attorney general blamed video challenges on TikTok for the death of a third child.

Re:

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Perhaps TikTok could send Venezuela a TikTok branded hammer to pound sand.

Re:

[fjo3]

Are we for banning tiktok or are we against it now? Trump has changed his mind and President elect Elon still hasn't weighed in. JD Vance hasn't been seen since the election. Rumor has it he's tied up in Elon's basement.

I'm for the ban. It's arguably a violation of the first amendment, but I see Tiktok as a weapon of war. The algorithm is deliberately slated to make children hate the West, in multiple ways. It's also having a terrible effect on attention span in children. I have seen this in my daughter, and her friends too. You don't have to like Trump to know that, accidentally, sometimes he will stumble upon a good policy, like a blind hog in a forest looking for acorns.

Re: Alternative headline

[zawarski]

Back in my day, we didnâ(TM)t need the government to protect our children against short attention spans, or even stupider, we did a little thing called parenting.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Back in my day we didn't need the government to protect our children from lead in the air either.

Re:

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

It's arguably a violation of the first amendment

So then there should be no ban. Wasn't that simple?

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Why should there be no ban? It's not obvious it's a violation of the first amendment. Corporations aren't people. Why do you believe that ownership rules of corporations fall under the banner of "speech".

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

Your could equally well say that if they went bankrupt then being broken up and sold off would be a first amendment violation. Companies don't become immune to laws just because they deal with user generated stuff.

Re:

[Dusanyu]

How is it a violation of the first amendment? Last I checked the US Bill of rights only applies to US citizens. Tick Tock is a Forgan owned entity As far as the US citizens using the platform there are plenty of other ones they can move too.

Re:

[MEMEyou]

no minds were changed... buying tiktok is not the same as letting china keep it.

Re:

[quantaman]

Venezuela begs for 10 million dollars

Don't pay the fine, get blocked.

I honestly don't get the siding with TikTok here:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blamed TikTok for the death of a 12-year-old girl who allegedly died after participating in a TikTok challenge that involved taking tranquilizer pills and not falling asleep

Sure Maduro isn't really the legitimate President (rigged the election). But that challenge is dangerous enough that I'd investigate the originator for attempted murder. If TikTok had a reasonable ability to see the challe

Re: Alternative headline

[zawarski]

If that was my kid, I would take the tranquilizers and kill myself for being such a shitty parent.

Re:

[diffract]

easy for a non-parent would say. imagine how your childhood would be if your parents watched over your shoulder 24/7/365. imagine how your parents must feel if they had nothing to do but watch you all the time.

Re: Alternative headline

[zawarski]

My kid could kick your tranqed kids ass.

Re:

[quantaman]

If that was my kid, I would take the tranquilizers and kill myself for being such a shitty parent.

If you've discovered how to raise children that never ever do something stupid then I suggest you go and write your parenting manual since you've accomplished something mankind has been struggling to do for thousands of years.

Re:

[diffract]

If this was a US-based social media site, people would be crying censorship, but because it's tiktok. You won't understand the siding here.
I am a parent and I have come across my kids seeing these dumb challenges on youtube

Re:

[BeaverCleaver]

I am a parent and I have come across my kids seeing these dumb challenges on youtube

Exactly. Wasn't the Tide Pod thing for a couple of years ago on Youtube?

When I was a kid, regular TV had shows like Jackass. Yes, some stupid people did indeed hurt themselves trying to emulate the stunts.

Of course, my comment here is in no way shape or form an endorsement of Tiktok. Tiktok is total shit. But as you can probably deduce from my .sig, I also think Youtube is pretty shit too.

Re:

[quantaman]

I honestly don't get the siding with TikTok here:

Yes you do. It's the exact same reasoning why you personally refuse to pay the $10 million for being equally responsible for these deaths.

That thought you just now had from me saying you are at fault? That's the same reason tiktok shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of others.

Really? I have a moderated revenue generating platform where the dangerous content was posted, I was informed of the fact, and I still didn't bother to remove it?

Re:

[thegarbz]

Begging for money is the job of politicians and $10million is *checks official term* "fucking irrelevant" for a country.
This was a ruling from the courts. Learn the difference.

Accountability v Censorship

[Bruce66423]

Imposing this fine is not healthy if there isn't a clear structure of accountability. To me we should have a deadline of 12 hours for a tech company to remove dangerous things like this after it has been reported to them, with an authorised government office responsible for making the reports. Once reported the tech company has the right to refuse to comply if it believes that the material is not dangerous. Any evidence that it is being used to suppress freedom of speech should be reported to an independent regulator who can order the sacking of the officer in the government office that went for censorship. This seems to strike a legitimate balance between freedom of speech and censorship.

Re:

[mjwx]

Imposing this fine is not healthy if there isn't a clear structure of accountability. To me we should have a deadline of 12 hours for a tech company to remove dangerous things like this after it has been reported to them, with an authorised government office responsible for making the reports. Once reported the tech company has the right to refuse to comply if it believes that the material is not dangerous. Any evidence that it is being used to suppress freedom of speech should be reported to an independent regulator who can order the sacking of the officer in the government office that went for censorship. This seems to strike a legitimate balance between freedom of speech and censorship.

Well to start off with, we're talking about Venezuela, it's not the bastion of freedom of expression and justice. Likely the fine is just because they've shown something that's pissed off Presidente Bobo.

But I digress, what you've described is largely how the EU works. it's "hey Company, we've identified this thing that's pretty much illegal and certainly very morally wrong (but we don't enforce that) so can you please fix it in a reasonable time frame and nothing more needs to be said"... It's just that

Lovely description of the EU system, thank you

[Bruce66423]

Mod it up!

We should be promoting TikTok

[thegarbz]

Darwin has some work to do. We shouldn't be fining TikTok we should be promoting these challenges to help weed out the stupid among the next generation and help a smarter gene work through the gene pool.

Re: We should be promoting TikTok

[vbdasc]

If some angry sub-100 IQ parent guns you down on the street after reading what you wrote, would it be considered Darwin at work?

Re:

[thegarbz]

Yes, sort of. Part of natural selection is the ability to risk assess. If someone takes offence at what I said and kills me it's no different than a zebra being stupid enough to drink from a waterhole with crocodiles in it. Natural selection drives death of the weak minds.

I said "sort of" because not everything is natural selection. An element of poor luck is involved as well, such as the poor luck of finding someone with a sub-100 IQ who is somehow smart enough to dox me, find my real identity, get a gun i

Stupid

[SuperDre]

These challenges aren't TikTok's fault, as they also happen on other social media, but they are called TikTok challenge as some happen to be on TikTok. It's the people who started the challenge and are participate in them that are responsible. And when it comes to children, the parents are responsible, certainly in the first example of the challenge with the tranqualizers, as how can the child get those pills. Stop blaming others for what somebody does.