EU Bares its Fangs on Big Tech
And the first one to be in the eye of a DSA-led probe is TikTok though more could follow
Having formally institutionalized the revamped Digital Services Act (DSA) over the previous weekend, the EU has now caught TikTok, the video-hosting service owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, in the crosshairs over potential breaches of the new regulations around the safety of children.
Of course, there are other breaches that the EU would be formally investigating and includes focus on addictive algorithms, the so-called rabbit-hole effect, age verification challenges and default privacy settings. In a press statement, the EU also adds that it would be probing ad transparency and data access for researchers. We wonder what else is left?
While the probe itself puts children’s safety at its heart, the European Commission will also explore the negative aspects of TikTok’s design and the algorithms it uses to surface content. The investigators believe that both of these could be playing a crucial role in the addictive behavior of children and the rabbit hole effects that bubbles up harmful content.
There’s more to it than child safety
The probe aims to “counter potential risks for the exercise of the fundamental right to the person’s physical and mental well-being [and] the respect of the rights of the child,” according to the statement by the EC. This means the age verification tools would also be under focus as would the platform’s privacy, safety and security systems that safeguards minors.
Moreover, the EC probe would also check on the default privacy settings for TikTok as it had done with Meta’s Instagram and Facebook platforms. EU Commissioner Theirry Breton’s post on the X platform (formerly Twitter) says, “Today we open an investigation into #TikTok over suspected breach of transparency & obligations to protect minors: Addictive design and screen time limits, rabbit hole effect, age verification and default privacy settings. Enforcing #DSA for safer Internet for youngsters.”
The investigation has also included aspects related to TikTok’s compliance to provide a searchable and reliable repository for advertisements and shortcomings, if any, around researchers’ access to their publicly accessible data. Both these points are an intrinsic part of the revamped DSA that the EU put in place last weekend.
What’s next for TikTok and the EU?
As per the procedures laid out, the Commission will continue to gather evidence once the investigations open. According to the DSA guidelines, the Commission can take further enforcement measures, including interim ones, as well as non-compliance based decisions. Looks like it may well be a long-haul for ByteDance here.
In the past TikTok and ByteDance made several changes to their policies for the EU users as part of their compliance efforts with the DSA. A crucial one was to give users the option of choice to not let algorithms power the “For You Page” (of suggestions). It also put in place new reporting options for “harmful content” while also dropping personalized ads for kids up to 17.
The latest investigation into TikTok comes on top of the already instituted probes against them and Meta to check whether they’ve done enough to remove illegal content and misinformation related to the ongoing violence in West Asia. Meta faced a $414 million fine in 2022 for posting personalized ads on the platform while having a paid version for users who don’t want them.
It would be interesting to see how the Big Tech companies respond to these investigations and what other countries learn from it. India already has the requisite laws in place though there haven’t been any Suo Motu investigations into the functioning of Big Tech companies in all the activities that the EU has pulled them up for.
