TikTok to Pay £12.7m Fine as UK Prepares Under-16 Social Media Ban

TikTok has abandoned its appeal against a £12.7m penalty imposed by the UK's data watchdog and will pay the fine, according to the Guardian, which reported the decision on 24 September. The Information Commissioner's Office fined the video app in 2023 over inadequate checks on who was using the platform and a failure to remove underage users.

That decision lands just months before the UK government's under-16 age limit for social media platforms comes into force next year. Age-checking is now at the centre of a widening regulatory squeeze on platform moderation.

What the ICO found

The ICO's case, opened against TikTok for the period between 2018 and 2020, found that up to 1.75 million UK children under 13 used the service in 2020 despite a minimum user age of 13. The regulator said TikTok had done "very little, if anything" to address underage use. It also found the company failed to give users clear information about how their data was collected and used, and did not obtain parental consent.

TikTok said it disagreed with the ruling but decided to pay because the findings covered a period ending in 2020. After that, the company rolled out what it described as many youth safety measures and policies. Emily Keaney, the ICO's deputy commissioner, said the successful action showed "how important it is for companies to have the right protections in place, including to prevent access by children who are not old enough to be using their services."

Separately, TikTok withdrew its appeal against an ICO request for information about how its algorithm processes teenagers' personal data and how it serves potentially harmful content. The ICO said it would now resume that investigation.

The original fine was issued when John Edwards was information commissioner. He told the Guardian at the time that TikTok was "not doing enough" on several fronts: preventing under-13s from joining, removing them once identified, and detecting them on the platform.

Age checks at the centre of enforcement

Age verification is the pressure point. The Guardian reports that age-checking measures at tech platforms will be at the vanguard of the government's new under-16 limit for social media, which comes into force next year. Ofcom, the UK's communications watchdog, has said "more action from the tech industry is needed" on enforcing age limits as the ban approaches.

Evidence from Australia, which introduced a social media ban for under-16s last December, suggests enforcement is not straightforward. The Guardian reports that the eSafety commissioner has said a "substantial proportion" of under-16s in the country have kept their accounts, managed to create new ones or bypassed age-gating systems.

TikTok said it disagreed with the ruling but had decided to pay the fine because it related to a period between 2018 and 2020, after which it had implemented "many youth safety measures and policies".

The TikTok case is one strand of a broader push. On 27 September, the Guardian reported that Bill Gates used an NBC Meet the Press interview with Kristen Welker, aired on Sunday, to call for federal regulation of AI development. Gates said the technology left unchecked could cause "a billion deaths" and that "no one thinks self-regulation is enough".

Gates told Welker: "You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like. And that has to be a required thing." He described compliance as "a little bit of overhead for the industry, but not a dramatic slowing of what they're doing."

He also pushed back on the idea of a simple kill switch. "It's not enough to have a kill switch," Gates said. "We're not yet at the point where they autonomously grab computers and can't be shut down." His remarks followed a nearly 6,000-word essay published in late August warning about AI risks. They also came after US senator Bernie Sanders proposed legislation on 23 September that would temporarily pause advanced AI development while guardrails are put in place.

The same Guardian interview coverage notes that Microsoft, the company Gates co-founded, has faced a campaign from employees and activists urging it to cut ties with the Israeli military over the use of AI tools. It also faces criticism over the US Department of Homeland Security's use of Azure to monitor, arrest and deport immigrants, claims made in a Guardian essay by Mohamed Hussein and Granate Kim of the No Azure for Apartheid group.

Money moves into agent control

Regulatory pressure is being matched by private capital aimed at the same problem of controlling automated systems. Tech.eu reported on 24 September that Kontext, an AI security company founded by Jens Ernstberger and Michel Osswald, raised $4 million in a round led by 42CAP with backing from a16z CSX and HTGF.

Kontext builds a runtime security platform for AI agents. The software sits between agents and the tools they use, evaluating activity in real time against security policies and risk signals. It factors in the agent's identity, the requested action, the target resource and the assigned task. Teams can first run it in observe mode to map behaviour, then enable enforcement to block unauthorised actions before they execute and keep an auditable record of each decision.

The framing is telling: as agents move from generating text to operating software with company credentials, vendors argue the control point has to sit at the moment of action. Tech.eu reports the funding will go to expanding engineering and developing the runtime enforcement platform. The company did not disclose customer numbers or revenue in the report.

Freight batteries, and a synth app

Regulation is not the only thread in this week's tech news. CleanTechnica reported on 27 September that Chinese battery maker CATL unveiled a modular battery platform for commercial vehicles at IAA Transportation 2026 in Hanover, Germany. The heavy-duty version of TECTRANS II claims up to 1,000 kilometres of range and megawatt-level charging, reaching 80% charge in 25 minutes, with a gravimetric energy density of 170 Wh/kg and a claimed 96% system round-trip efficiency.

CATL estimates the standardized pack approach can cut commercial vehicle development cycles by about 50% and reduce research and development costs by 60% to 70%. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with DHL Group at the show to develop green freight corridors in Europe, building on a partnership announced in 2024.

On the consumer side, a listing on the App Store dated 25 September describes Digitron, a virtual analog synth and sequencer by developer Evgenii Petrov. It supports MIDI keyboards and CC controllers, Pocket Operator sync, AUv3, eight synth tracks, an audio recorder and editor, and an oscilloscope. Recent updates listed on the page include DSP performance improvements, a reworked Quantizer module, a sequencer status bar, a low-pass filter on Master FX and more default patches.

None of that carries the weight of the TikTok decision. The company has now given up two appeals, paid its fine and left an ICO investigation into its algorithm and teenagers' data free to continue, all while the UK counts down to a ban that will test whether age gates can do what a £12.7m penalty could not.