Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, has announced on Twitter at 12pm Italian time that the European Commission has initiated a formal proceedings against TikTok for alleged violations of the obligations of transparency and protection of minors.
In particular, from Breton’s tweet it is clear that the design of the app would be in the crosshairs, which it would be addictive and would fuel the rabbit hole effect, i limits on usage timethe procedures for age verification and the default privacy settings.
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twitter: Breton’s announcement of the investigation
The risk: a fine of 6% of turnover
According to what the Reuters news agency has learned, the investigation is legata al Digital Services Act of the European Union and would aim to understand if the social network controlled by ByteDance is really doing enough to protect children: “The protection of minors is an absolute priority for the application of the DSA – explained Breton – Being a platform that reaches millions of children and adolescents, TikTok must fully comply with the DSA and has a particular role to play in protecting minors online. We initiate this formal procedure to ensure that proportionate actions are taken to protect the physical and emotional well-being of young Europeans, we must spare no effort to protect our children.”
From the company, a spokesperson has reminded Italian Tech that “TikTok has introduced functions and settings innovations to protect teenagers and prevent children under 13 from accessing the platform, an issue that the entire sector is addressing”, and that “we will continue to collaborate with experts and players in the sector to ensure the safety of young people on TikTok and we are glad to now have the opportunity to explain this work in detail to the commission”.
It must in fact be said that the platform is largely the most severe in the world content moderation (here the numbers that confirm it) both in the so-called age-gating, i.e. the action of filtering and controlling the age of users; furthermore, already in January 2021, TikTok was the first among the large social platforms to make private by default all accounts, new and existing, of users between 13 and 15 years old. Despite this, the company now risks sanctions up to 6% of global turnoverif it is found guilty of violating the rules established by the European DSA.
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The details of the accusations against TikTok
According to what was explained, the investigation would have started from an analysis of the risk assessment report sent by TikTok to the EU in September 2023 and by TikTok’s responses to formal requests for information made by the EU Commission on illegal content, protection of minors and access to data: if proven, any non-compliance would constitute violations of Articles 34 (1), 34 (2), 35 (1), 28 (1), 39 (1) and 40 (12) of the DSA.
After the formal opening of proceedings, the Commission will continue to collect evidence, including by making further requests for information or carrying out interviews or inspections, and Margrethe Vestager, current EU Commissioner for Competitionrecalled that “the safety and well-being of online users in Europe is paramount” and that “TikTok must closely examine the services it offers and carefully consider the risks they pose for its users, young and old. The Commission will now a thorough investigation.”
The initiation of a formal proceeding gives the Commission the power to take further measuressuch as provisional measures and non-compliance decisions, and of welcome every commitment made by TikTok to resolve the issues under investigation: on April 25, the social network of Chinese origin was also designated as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) based on the DSA, after it declared it had almost 136 million users monthly assets in the EU. For this, like other platforms of this size, it had to start complying with a series of obligations provided for by the European regulation.
This is the second investigation of its kind by the European Union, after the open one against Twitter (X, as Elon Musk decided to call it).
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– 2024-03-17 15:50:44
