EU finds TikTok violates its digital rule book by failing to protect privacy of minors

The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion on Fri­day said it found Tik­Tok had not ad­e­quate­ly pro­tect­ed chil­dren’s pri­va­cy rights on its plat­form by al­low­ing adults to view the ac­counts of mi­nors.

The ac­tion ex­posed chil­dren to cy­ber­bul­ly­ing, un­want­ed con­tact and preda­to­ry be­hav­ior, com­mis­sion spokesper­son Thomas Reg­nier said.

“Chil­dren’s con­tent must nev­er be vis­i­ble to strangers,” he said. If Tik­Tok does not take steps called for by the Eu­ro­pean Union’s land­mark Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act, “mi­nors are ex­posed to preda­tors, to groom­ing and to cy­ber­bul­ly­ing,” Reg­nier said, adding that chil­dren aged 13 to 15 can “eas­i­ly” change their ac­counts from pri­vate to pub­lic and the pri­vate ac­counts of mi­nors aged 16 to 17 can be seen by any­one on the in­ter­net. “We do not ac­cept this,” Reg­nier said. “Putting de­fault set­tings for mi­nors is not a beau­ty con­test un­der the DSA. It must be ef­fec­tive.”

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion comes on the heels of back-to-back crack­downs on Big Tech by Brus­sels, which has led the world in reg­u­lat­ing tech be­he­moths in­clud­ing Meta and Ap­ple.

Tik­Tok can now de­fend it­self and re­ply to the find­ings. If un­sat­is­fied with the Chi­nese firm’s re­sponse, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion could is­sue a so-called non-com­pli­ance de­ci­sion and pos­si­ble fine worth up to 6% of the com­pa­ny’s to­tal an­nu­al rev­enue.

The Chi­nese so­cial me­dia firm, whose par­ent com­pa­ny ByteDance is based in Bei­jing, said in a state­ment it would re­view Brus­sels’ find­ings and “con­tin­ue to en­gage con­struc­tive­ly with the Com­mis­sion.”

“Pro­tect­ing mi­nors on­line is a goal we share, and we are com­mit­ted to build­ing on our strong track record of con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment,” Tik­Tok said in a state­ment.

If un­sat­is­fied with the firm’s re­sponse, the com­mis­sion could is­sue a so-called non-com­pli­ance de­ci­sion and pos­si­ble fine worth up to 6% of the com­pa­ny’s to­tal an­nu­al rev­enue.

The com­mis­sion es­ti­mates most of Tik­Tok’s 170 mil­lion users in the EU are chil­dren, with 7% of chil­dren aged 12 to 15 spend­ing four to five hours dai­ly on the app.

The 27-na­tion Eu­ro­pean Union found in Feb­ru­ary that Tik­Tok had breached an­oth­er as­pect of its dig­i­tal rule book with an “ad­dic­tive de­sign” of fea­tures such as au­to­play and in­fi­nite scrolling that could harm the phys­i­cal and men­tal health of users and mi­nors es­pe­cial­ly. —BRUS­SELS (AP)

_______

Sto­ry by SAM Mc­NEIL | As­so­ci­at­ed Press