EU warns TikTok: Minor safety must be default, not opt-in
▼ Summary
– The European Commission issued preliminary findings that TikTok must improve child safety under the Digital Services Act, with specific issues to address.
– The Commission recommends TikTok’s default settings for minors’ public accounts should restrict content visibility to chosen users and prevent recommendations in the For You feed.
– Private accounts can still be discovered via other users’ following lists, and profile photos remain publicly visible.
– If TikTok fails to comply, it could face fines up to 6 percent of its global annual revenue.
– The EU’s probe into TikTok’s addictive recommender systems is ongoing, following a similar UK child safety investigation launched last week.
The European Union has issued a formal warning to TikTok, demanding that the platform make minor safety the default setting rather than an optional feature. The European Commission’s preliminary findings, announced today under the Digital Services Act (DSA), outline specific changes required to better protect children using the video-sharing app.
According to the Commission, TikTok should reconfigure the default privacy settings for minors with “public” accounts. Content posted by these users should only be visible to those the teen has explicitly chosen to share with, and such posts must not appear in the For You feed recommendations for other users. Even accounts set to private present risks: they can be easily discovered through the “following” lists of others, and profile photos remain visible to anyone. If TikTok fails to address these concerns, it could face a DSA non-compliance decision and fines of up to 6 percent of its global annual revenue.
“Minors deserve a safe experience from the moment they go online. The Digital Services Act requires platforms to build protections for minors into the design of their services, and holds them to account when they fail to do so,” said EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen in the announcement. “A high level of protection should not be an opt-in; it should be the default. This is our responsibility for current and future generations of European children.”
These preliminary findings come just one week after the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, launched a similar child safety investigation into TikTok, with updates expected in October. The EU also confirmed that its separate probe into the addictive “rabbit hole effect” of TikTok’s recommender systems remains ongoing.
(Source: The Verge)
