Report from Politico
In Brief – The European Commission has made a preliminary determination that TikTok has failed to comply with provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) requiring advertising transparency. Among the many requirements that the DSA imposes on large platforms is to provide a searchable repository of advertisements that appear on their platform and give access to independent researchers. The Commission believes that TikTok’s ads repository falls short on the content of advertisements, the users that are targeted by ads, and who pays for the ads, as well as not providing researchers the appropriate search functionality. A TikTok spokesperson said that while the company supports the goals of the DSA and continues to improve its ad transparency tools, “We disagree with some of the Commission’s interpretations and note that guidance is being delivered via preliminary findings rather than clear, public guidelines.” The Commission opened its formal investigation of TikTok in February 2024 and also raised issues with privacy practices, the allegedly addictive nature of TikTok’s algorithmic systems, and the safety of minors on the platform. Last December, following alleged abuses of TikTok to disrupt Romanian national elections, the Commission added an investigation of TikTok’s processes to protect the integrity of elections. Those investigations continue.
Context – There are 24 large platforms that have been designated as VLOPs under the DSA and face direct regulation by the European Commission. These include social media, marketplaces, search engines, and pornography platforms. The Commission has opened compliance investigations of several of the social media platforms, including X, Meta and TikTok. The first preliminary findings related to TikTok parallel the Commission’s findings related to X, which also focused on ads transparency. Like with TikTok, the contentious issues related to speech moderation, such as those related to misinformation and elections, which are very sensitive for the Trump Administration, at least when applied to the US-based platforms, remain open and unresolved for X as well.