Overview
- The European Commission’s preliminary findings say infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and a highly personalized recommender likely breach the Digital Services Act by failing to assess and mitigate risks, especially for minors and vulnerable adults.
- Regulators propose concrete changes that include disabling infinite scroll over time, enforcing effective screen‑time breaks at night and reworking the recommendation system.
- The Commission judged TikTok’s current mitigations—time‑management prompts and parental controls—to be easy to dismiss or burdensome for parents, and therefore ineffective.
- If the preliminary view is upheld, the EU can issue a non‑compliance decision and fine up to 6% of ByteDance’s global annual turnover; no final order or deadline has been set.
- TikTok rejects the findings as false and says it will challenge them; the probe, opened in February 2024, continues on other fronts, with conclusions drawn from TikTok’s internal materials, data requests, scientific research and expert interviews.