The Italian Competition and Market Guarantee Authority (AGCM) has fined TikTok 10 million euros, considering the company’s controls applied to the content circulating within the social network “inadequate” and insufficient.
Mainly, this sanction is directed against content that can harm and threaten the safety of minors and vulnerable subjects, such as the famous ‘French scar’ challenge that went viral on the platform in 2023.
Likewise, the AGCM has decided to fine “jointly and severally” three companies in the Bytedance group: the Irish company TikTok Technology Limited, the British company TikTok Information Technologies and the Italian company TikTok Italy Srl.
In March of last year, the Italian authority, with the help of the Special Antitrust Unit of the Finance Guard, opened an investigation against the platform. As the institution explained this Thursday on its website, the purpose was to “verify TikTok’s responsibility in the dissemination of content that may threaten the psychophysical safety of users, especially if they are minors and vulnerable.”
Specifically, these investigations were born as a result of a trend that began in 2023 in which young people participated in a challenge that went viral called ‘the French scar’, where self-harming acts and behaviors were committed. This consisted of pinching your cheekbones so hard and for so long that you ended up getting a bruise, which can even leave permanent marks.
In its statement, the AGM highlights that this type of challenge “causes undue conditioning for users, who are encouraged to use the platform more and more.” Furthermore, the entity adds that the dissemination of this type of content is based on “a recommendation system” according to the “algorithmic profile” that TikTok generates of its users. That is, the social network “constantly selects which videos to assign to each consumer” with the aim of “increasing their interactions and time spent on the platform.”
At the time, after the beginning of the investigations by the Italian authorities, TikTok claimed that it would collaborate “closely” with them. Likewise, the platform assured that it did not allow “content that shows or promotes dangerous activities and challenges” and that its recommendation policies “help guarantee the safety” of the community.
However, the Italian body alleges that since the investigation began, TikTok “has not taken adequate measures to prevent the dissemination of said content.” In any case, the opposite. And the AGCM affirms that the social network itself does not fully respect the guidelines it has adopted, but that it still continues to assure its users that the platform is “a safe space.”
Some of the measures that the Italian institution maintains that the TikTok social network applies “without sufficiently taking into account the specific vulnerability of adolescents” is “the difficulty in distinguishing reality from fiction and the tendency to emulate group behavior.” .
For its part, a TikTok spokesperson assured local media that the company “does not agree with the decision” adopted by the Antitrust Authority. “Content linked to the so-called ‘French scar’ averaged only 100 daily searches in Italy before the AGCM announced the start of its investigation last year. We long ago reduced the visibility of such content for users under 18 years of age, even excluding them from the ‘For You’ page,” the representative added.
Now, this is not the first sanction that the social network has received. And last September, the platform was fined 345 million euros by the Irish Data Protection Commission after detecting deficiencies in protecting the data of minor users of the application during the second half of 2020. .
In addition, TikTok is pending whether it will be able to remain valid in the United States after this Wednesday the House of Representatives approved the legislative project that could prohibit the microvideo application in the country.
