EU Commission finds TikTok may breach DSA child safety rules
Digital platforms are facing greater accountability as regulators strengthen rules around youth protection and algorithm-driven content recommendations.
The European Commission has issued preliminary findings that TikTok failed to meet the Digital Services Act’s requirements for protecting minors, citing the platform’s public account settings and recommendation system.
TikTok allows minors to set their accounts to ‘public’, meaning anyone, including people without a TikTok account, may view their content. Posts published by users aged 16 and 17 may also be recommended to any other TikTok user through the platform’s For You Feed.
The Commission considers that the default settings for minors’ public accounts should make their content visible only to TikTok users whom they have accepted. Older minors could retain the option to share content more widely within TikTok, but their posts should not be accessible to audiences outside the platform.
TikTok should also stop recommending content posted by minors through the For You Feed, according to the Commission’s preliminary assessment.
The findings do not constitute a final decision. TikTok can examine the Commission’s evidence and respond in writing before regulators determine whether the company breached the DSA.
Why does it matter?
The case tests how the DSA’s child-safety requirements apply to platform design in practice. A final decision could require TikTok to change both the default visibility of minors’ accounts and how its recommendation system distributes their content.
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