On Thursday 12 October, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, sent a letter to the CEO of the social network TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, urging him to put an end to the dissemination of illegal content and disinformation on his platform. This type of content, which already has a strong online presence, is proliferating on social networks in the wake of the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel. Letters for the same reasons were sent to the owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, on Tuesday, and to the head of the Meta group, Mark Zuckerberg, on Wednesday (see EUROPE 13269/8).
The Internal Market Commissioner stressed that particular attention should be paid to moderating content on TikTok, given the large number of children and young teenagers on the platform.
In addition, as he had done in the case of X, Mr Breton pointed out that, in accordance with the provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) (see EUROPE 13262/9), TikTok was required to “act promptly” when notifications were received and to “remove the content in question where justified”. Several “qualified sources” have indicated, as on X, that “potentially illegal content is circulating” on the service despite warnings from the relevant authorities.
Mr Breton also stressed the need to put in place “proportionate and effective mitigation measures to deal with the risks” of disinformation. “Reliable sources must be properly differentiated from terrorist propaganda”, he added, while several public media and third-party sources have reported cases of falsified and manipulated images and facts circulating on TikTok in recent days.
Like Meta and X, TikTok has 24 hours to respond to the Commission’s requests. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)