Yesterday, the European Commission announced a formal procedure to assess whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act (DSL) in the areas of the protection of minors, advertising transparency, access to data by researchers and risk management addictive designs and harmful content.
To examine the Chinese social video network, Brussels relies on a preliminary investigation and includes an analysis of the risk assessment report provided to it by the same TikTok network in September 2023. The procedure takes into account the answers that the platform has given so far to the formal requests made to it by the Commission on illegal content, protection of minors and access to data.
The Commission’s inquiry will assess “actual or foreseeable negative effects arising from the design of TikTok’s system, including algorithmic systems, which may stimulate behavioral addictions and create so-called “rabbit hole effects”. This syndrome, a metaphor that alludes to the tale of Alice in Wonderland, points out the user who feels as real a distorted world, with no resemblance to reality.
According to Brussels, “this assessment is necessary to be able to counteract the potential risks for the exercise of the fundamental right to the physical and mental well-being of the person, respect for the rights of the child, as well as its impact on radicalization processes “.
The new investigation will also look at whether TikTok meets its legal obligations in Europe to provide a searchable and reliable repository for ads that appear on the platform, because it believes there have been “alleged deficiencies” in providing access to researchers on public access data from TikTok.
In April 2023, the network was designated a very large online platform (VLOP) under the law, because it then had 135.9 million monthly active users in the countries of the European Union.
Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton observed that TikTok “reaches millions of children and teenagers”, which is why it “has a particular role to play in the protection of minors online”. The EC aims to “ensure that proportionate measures are taken to protect the physical and emotional well-being of young Europeans”. “We must spare no effort to protect our children”, he concluded.
