By Kelsey McGillis
Law Student Editor
The European Union (EU) has initiated a formal investigation into TikTok, the social media platform owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. This investigation comes in the wake of similar EU proceedings against Elon Musk’s platform, X, in December 2023, discussed in a January 16 post of the IBTBlog.
Both investigations center around potential violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). Enacted in August 2023, the DSA regulates all online platforms operating within the EU. Its mandate is to ensure platform transparency and accountability for internet service providers (ISPs) and to streamline certain regulations. Interestingly, the DSA imposes more stringent requirements on large platforms operating in the EU, with “large platforms” defined as those with over 45 million monthly users. TikTok, with nearly 136 million monthly active EU users is thus subject to the DSA’s enhanced mandate and increased scrutiny of potential illegal content and security risks.
The formal investigation of TikTok is led by EU internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, and will specifically focus on potential breaches of child protection rules and transparent advertising guidelines. Breton’s decision to officially investigate TikTok was influenced by the platform’s risk assessment report and TikTok’s responses to multiple information requests. Notably, this investigation follows a $370 million fine imposed on TikTok by EU regulators in September 2023 for insufficient protection of children’s personal information in alleged violation of EU data protection regulations.
The EU Commission will scrutinize TikTok’s age verification tools, designed to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content, to assess their effectiveness. Additionally, they will evaluate TikTok’s transparency regarding advertisements on the platform and the accessibility of its data to researchers. Other areas under review include TikTok’s risk management practices, age verification tools, and concerns about allegedly addictive design, screen time limits, and its algorithmic design. If TikTok is found to be in violation of DSA rules, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, could face fines of up to 6% of its global revenue. In context, ByteDance reportedly generated over US $110 billion in sales in 2023, which would expose the parent company to a potential fine of US $6.6 billion.
The investigation marks another example of the EU’s aggressive approach to enforce its digital regulations against non-EU companies operating within the EU either physically or digitally. The EU’s recent DSA enforcements shed light on how regional regulations can transcend geographical boundaries, thereby influencing and shaping the behavior of digital platforms operating on a global scale.