Two years after the official opening of the investigation against TikTok (see EUROPE 13353/16), the European Commission delivered its first verdict on Friday 6 February: according to the institution, the Chinese social network’s design is “addictive” and could harm the well-being of its users.
In its preliminary findings, the Commission points the finger at “addictive features” that “could harm the physical and mental wellbeing” of the app’s users, especially minors, who are particularly encouraged to scroll through content “compulsively”, including at night.
The Commission is particularly targeting abusive ‘scrolling’ (the uninterrupted scrolling of content), autoplay videos and the incessant sending of notifications. It also accuses TikTok of not taking sufficient account of indicators that show compulsive use by young people.
“We are seriously questioning the service’s core design features, which we consider to be neither assessed nor mitigated in terms of mental health risks”, details a senior European official.
According to the same senior official, the risk assessments that the platform is required to provide “do not meet the DSA’s level of requirements”. “Almost all the functions for limiting screen time or introducing parental controls are very easy to deactivate”, he says.
It is also the first time that the Commission has established a legal standard for a platform’s addictive design.
TikTok is still under investigation for verifying the age of its users and for what is known as the ‘rabbit hole effect’, which refers to the type of content that recommender systems promote and the risks that this can pose.
The platform said in a statement that the Commission’s conclusions “present a categorically false and totally unfounded description of [the] platform”.
This decision comes in a sensitive political context, with several Member States considering restricting access to social networks for minors (see EUROPE 13795/16).
France, Spain and Denmark have all announced that they will take decisions along these lines by the end of the year (see EUROPE 13801/11). This is supposed to protect young people from the physical and mental dangers posed by platforms and their algorithms. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)