Report from Reuters
In Brief – TikTok faces fresh allegations from the European Commission that its platform design violates the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to adequately protect minors. The preliminary findings mark the fourth DSA case opened against the company in the past two years. This time, the Commission criticizes TikTok for allowing minors to make their accounts public, exposing their content to anyone and increasing the risk of harassment or contact from abusers. Regulators also argue that “private accounts” on TikTok are insufficiently protected because minors can still be identified through other users’ “following” and “followers” lists. The Commission said minors’ accounts should default to settings that limit content visibility to approved followers. TikTok said it would review the findings and argued it already provides more than 50 privacy and safety features for teen accounts.
Context – Protecting teens from online ills is an increasingly global phenomenon. EU countries have put the issue at the top of their agenda and are pressing the Commission for action. TikTok announced in January that it would start using age-estimation technology across Europe to identify and remove accounts belonging to children under 13. The Commission is expected to roll out an app soon that will be certified to transmit a user’s age to any digital platform in a secure format, and child safety experts have proposed a tiered set of platform standards by age. The DSA defines online risks at a very high level, such as “any actual or foreseeable negative effects in relation to… minors”. The specifics then get worked out in numerous platform-by-platform in investigations. The Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), there are currently 25, face the strictest rules and enforcement by the Commission. Active DSA investigations are underway against Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Temu, Shein, Apple, Google, Booking and Microsoft, as well as four adult sites, and several of them face more than one. Allegations of failing to effectively protect young users has been a part of the probes of each of the social media platforms.