TikTok suspends rewards app Lite after EU accusations: “It can be addictive”

TikTok has decided to suspend its rewards program on the Lite app, which was only available in France and Spain and ended up at the center of an investigation launched by the EU, which said it could be “a risk to children”. This despite the fact that the entire app is reserved for adults, like on Italian Tech we have already explained about ten days ago. The Brussels investigation will continue, however, announced the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, taking note of the Chinese company’s announcement: “Our children are not guinea pigs for social media”.

In recent days, the EU had announced that it had started an investigation (here are the complaints) towards TikTok Lite, above all for two reasons: because (come more or less all social networks) could be addictive “particularly in children” and more concretely because it would have violated the obligations imposed by the Digital Services Act.

Europe’s accusations against TikTok

As established by the DSA, in fact, all large or very large online platforms (i.e. that have over 45 million active users on community territory) are required to submit a risk assessment reportincluding measures to mitigate any potential systemic risks, before debuting new features that “could have a critical impact on their systemic risks.” Which TikTok wouldn’t have done with the Lite app, which would have been made available to the public without first submitting the report to the EU.

Basically TikTok Lite provides rewards (not cash) which can then be redeemed for Amazon vouchers o PayPal gift card or even donated to creators, to users who perform more activity on the platformsuch as watching videos, liking content, commenting on it, following various creators or inviting other people to download the app and sign up.

From the European Union they explained that they had issued a first warning on this as early as April 17th, asking the platform owned by the giant ByteDance to provide “more details” within 24 hours. No answers were received, hence the opening of a formal investigation: TikTok is called upon to present arguments in its defense by May 3rd to avoid running into heavy fines, up to 1% of the global annual turnover and 5% of the daily turnover. Furthermore, it was likely that he would arrive within the next few hours temporary stop to the rewards program on European soil (therefore in France and Spain) for at least 60 days, a precautionary measure that would have given Brussels “time to evaluate the safety of the program without European citizens being guinea pigs”. Measurement that in the end it was overcome by the decision presa da TikTok.

The company: “A document is needed for TikTok Lite”

From TikTok, which we asked for a comment on the issue, they revealed to us have provided in the late afternoon of Tuesday 23 April the requested report on the risk assessment and above all they underlined that they were “disappointed by this decision”, precisely because “the reward instrument TikTok Lite is not available for minors of 18 years” and because even for adults however “there is a daily viewing limit of videos”, which is around 60-85 minutes.

“We will continue the dialogue with the European Commission”, they added from the company, reminding us that on TikTok Lite “only users over the age of 18 who have verified their age can access viewing activities or redeem rewards, through methods such as sending a selfie with a identity card with photo, such as passport or driving license, or by entering the data of one credit card”.

@capoema