European Union (EU) regulators are seeking to ban the most addictive features of the TikTok video platform, pushing the company to clamp down on “infinitive scrolling” keeping people hooked on the app for hours at a time.
In a landmark move, the European Commission is looking to force TikTok to effectively make its hugely popular video sharing app less addictive.
The EU’s executive arm, which enforces the bloc’s strict new digital regulations, has the power to levy a hefty fine on TikTok, if the company fails to make changes to its app in response to the finding.
The commission announced on Friday that its investigation had concluded TikTok had failed to properly assess the risks associated with the hyper-addictive features of its app.
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The commission has made a preliminary finding that TikTok breached the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the union’s strict set of rules aimed at regulating excessive and harmful features of big social media platforms.
The regulations have brought the EU into frequent conflict with tech multinationals, who have bristled at the efforts by European policymakers to lay down rules in what EU officials describe as the online “wild west”.
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The European headquarters of TikTok, a Chinese video-sharing platform, is based in Dublin, employing more than 2,600 staff.
The commission’s decision set out “clear” potential violations by TikTok of the EU rules, focused on the addictive nature of the app, including how it utilises an “infinitive scroll” feature, the autoplaying of videos, push notifications and its highly personalised algorithm recommending content to users.
The EU decision would likely require TikTok to make “far reaching” changes to the design of the app and its functions, one senior commission involved in the investigation said.
Possible changes TikTok could make to its app, to address EU concerns, would be the introduction of “mandatory breaks” cutting people off after a certain amount of time, or a feature that locked people out of the app late at night, according to one source involved in the commission inquiry.
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“To our knowledge this is really the first time anywhere in the world where a legal standard on addictive design on a social media platform has been set,” the senior EU official said.
TikTok and EU regulators have been involved in discussions behind the scenes about the investigation. The video-sharing platform will now have an opportunity to formally respond to the finding.
The decision was in part based on a belief that TikTok had disregarded indicators pointing to the compulsive use of its app by users, such as data showing the amount of time minors spent on TikTok late at night.
Existing safeguards in the app to limit the amount of time people spent scrolling through videos were viewed as ineffective by commission investigators.
A spokesman for TikTok said the commission’s findings were “a categorically false and entirely meritless depiction of our platform”.
“We will take whatever steps are necessary to challenge these findings through every means available to us,” he said.
Companies have traditionally challenged EU decisions and fines in the courts, teeing up a potential legal fight between TikTok and Brussels over the commission’s ability to regulate how addictive an online platform can be.
The EU’s powerful executive body has the power to levy online platforms with fines of up to 6 per cent of total global turnover, for the gravest breaches of its digital regulations. The commission also has the power to ban a platform as a very last resort.
The EU body is conducting separate investigations into certain addictive features of Facebook and Instagram, focused on how people can be led down online rabbit holes, which are still ongoing.
