The company will now be able to use personalized advertisements without users being able to refuse them. A widespread practice on the Internet, where compliance with consent comes up against the financial interests of platforms.
by
From July 13, Tiktok users in the European Union, Switzerland and the United Kingdom will receive personalized advertisements based on the content they watch, which has so far been not possible without their prior agreement.
In a Update of its conditions of use published on June 8, the Chinese video sharing application, used by more One hundred million Europeans Each month in 2020, said that this change will automatically apply to all its major customers, without asking them their consent.
Users may, however, continue to refuse that the “data received from partners” from Tiktok, that is to say via their activity on other websites, have an influence on the advertisements addressed to them on the social network.
To justify this turnaround, the company invokes its legitimate interests to “put advertisers in contact with users likely to be interested in their products or services”. And specifies that if minors are not affected by this change, they will receive, from their 18 years, a notification, followed within thirty days of the first personalized announcements.
of applications that depend on advertising
This advertising policy is already effective in the rest of the world. On April 15, 2021, the Chinese company had, in fact, changed its conditions of use in this sense on all other continents .
Personalized advertisements are a widespread practice on social networks, which draw most of their profits from the announcements broadcast from their users. Tiktok is not the only one to impose this practice on its customers. He joined In Instagram or Twitter in Europe, which already use such targeting, without their users being always aware.
Legally, Digital Service Act on which European institutions agreed on April 23, prohibited only advertising targeting children or using sensitive data, such as religion or sexual orientation. The practice, now, common to all the largest social networks in Europe, is therefore legal but is debated.
The National Commission for Data Protection (CNIL), the independent French authority responsible, among other things, to enforce the rights of online citizens, pleaded in January 2020