The European Commission announced on February 6 that after a two-year investigation, preliminary conclusions showed that TikTok violated the EU's Digital Services Act due to its "addictive" design. TikTok said the findings were "completely wrong."
According to Global Network, the European Commission's official website announced in February 2024 that it had officially launched an investigation into TikTok, a short video social media platform owned by ByteDance, to review whether the online platform has taken sufficient measures to prevent the spread of illegal content and whether it has violated the provisions of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) such as protecting minors and researchers' data access.
According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the European Commission pointed out in its preliminary findings that TikTok failed to "adequately assess" the physical and mental health effects that its autoplay and other functions may have on users (including children), and failed to take effective measures to reduce risks. The EU said TikTok's time management tools were "easily overlooked", especially by younger users, while parental controls required "additional time and skill" to enable. The European Commission has put forward several recommended measures that TikTok can take, including setting up a "screen usage break" mechanism at night; adjusting the recommendation algorithm to provide users with personalized content; and disabling so-called "infinite scrolling" to prevent users from quickly browsing the millions of videos on the platform.
The European Commission can impose a fine of up to 6% of global annual turnover on TikTok, which is expected to reach billions of dollars. If TikTok wants to avoid fines, it must "change the design of its services in Europe."
A TikTok spokesperson said the European Commission's findings described the platform as "completely false and unfounded" and said it planned to dispute it.
The EU also launched an investigation into social platform X last year, focusing on whether its AI tool Grok was used to generate sexualized images of real people. In December last year, the European Union fined X platform 120 million euros for "blue tick certification" issues, saying that the platform did not "effectively verify the person behind the account" and had a problem of "misleading users."
According to French media reports, social media analyst Paul Pescatore said that the latest EU measures are a "reality check" for TikTok and a "warning sign" for all social media platforms. Markets are moving from “maximizing participation” to “designing for accountability,” and regulators now have the tools to execute the shift.
In December last year, Australia's social media ban for people under the age of 16 officially came into effect. This was the first initiative in the world to legislate such a minimum age limit on social media. Many countries are already considering restricting teenagers’ access to social media.
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EU requires TikTok to shut down "addictive" design and rectify recommendation algorithm