Asked why parents in these cases had not been able to access data, Mr Dennington said: “This is really complicated stuff because it relates to the legal requirements around when we remove data and we have, under data protection laws, requirements to remove data quite quickly.
After the lawsuit against TikTok was filed last week, Ellen Roome, mother of 14-year-old Jools, told the PA news agency that she had been trying to obtain her son’s data from TikTok as she “just wants answers” about his death and the data was “the only piece that we haven’t looked at”.
Data from the TikTok accounts of four British children who their parents believe died after attempting a challenge on the platform may have been deleted, an executive from the firm said.
The wrongful death lawsuit claims the four died attempting a so-called “blackout challenge”, and said they want access to their children’s account data to “get answers” about how they died.
The families of Isaac Kenevan, Archie Battersbee, Julian “Jools” Sweeney and Maia Walsh – all aged 12 to 14 – have sued TikTok and its parent firm ByteDance in the US in an effort to force the firm to release their children’s data.
