TikTok might have failed to meet EU standards for child safety online.
Allowing content posted by minors to be pushed on TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed could be a violation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission has said.
On TikTok, minors can choose to have a public-facing profile. According to EU preliminary findings, this setting enables content published by 16- and 17-year-olds to be algorithmically recommended worldwide.
Exposure like this could result in unwanted contact from bad actors or increase the risk of cyberbullying, the EU said.
The Commission launched formal proceedings into TikTok’s compliance with the DSA in early 2024, which also probed the platform’s potential addictive design and access to data, and resulted in negative preliminary results.
A different line of investigation into the company’s advertising transparency was closed through binding commitments last December.
Today’s (24 July) results are based on an analysis of TikTok’s interface, internal data and documents, as well as interviews with law enforcement officers and child protection experts, according to the Commission.
Content uploaded to the internet is rarely ever removed completely, and the EU said that minors risk lifelong consequences if their content is widely circulated online.
It further said that minors can be easily found through the ‘following’ and ‘followers’ lists of other users even when their accounts are set to ‘private’. Their profile photos also remain accessible to anyone on the internet, including users without a TikTok account.
Under the DSA, platforms accessible to minors must ensure a high level of privacy and safety. TikTok might be failing to meet these standards, the EU said.
The company is up for massive fines of up to 6pc of its global annual turnover if it is ultimately found to be in breach of the law.
The EU wants TikTok to adjust the default settings of minors’ ‘public’ accounts, so that their content is, by default, only visible to those who follow the minor user.
Older minors can have the option of a public-facing account, but their content should never be accessible to a global audience, the Commission warned, arguing that TikTok should not recommend minors’ content to other TikTok users through the For You feed.
“Minors deserve a safe experience from the moment they go online,” said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy. “A high level of protection should not be an opt-in – it should be the default.”
The investigation, now ongoing for more than two years, also covers the ‘rabbit-hole effect’ of TikTok’s recommender systems and the negative consequences of age-inappropriate experiences on the platform. These probes are still underway.
“Under-18 accounts are private by default and we are one of the only platforms where younger teens cannot use direct messaging or have their content eligible to appear in the For You feed,” a TikTok spokesperson told SiliconRepublic.com.
The ByteDance-owned company said it would continue to engage constructively with the Commission.
TikTok accounts of users under 18 are automatically set to private, the company said, noting that users must be at least 16 to use direct messaging or have their content eligible to appear in the For You feed.
The company also said that it does not recommend accounts belonging to teens to users over 18. It said that users can only find private accounts of minors using ‘followers’ lists if the minor has chosen to make the list public instead of private.
Governments worldwide are cracking down on social media platforms to protect children from online harms, with Australia becoming the first country to blanket-ban major platforms for children under 16.
The EU, has, for years, targeted social media giants for their addictive designs, recommender system feeds and child safety measures with its landmark DSA that carries a hefty penalty for offenders.
The bloc is now considering age-gating sites as a means to address the wider concerns surrounding social media usage by children. France, earlier this week, became the first EU country to ban social media for under-15s.
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
————————————————
