The Commission, which supervises dozens of the world’s largest social media firms under the DSA, in the last months opened investigations into TikTok as well as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram over alleged addictive algorithms.
TikTok’s commitment to withdraw a feature in the EU also comes as major tech companies are increasingly pulling features and products from Europe amid a regulatory show of force.
Meta in June paused its plan to collect Europeans’ posts and images on Facebook and Instagram to train its artificial intelligence tools over privacy concerns from regulators. It said a month later it will not release its new AI model over EU regulations.
Apple has said it will block the release of new AI tech over fear it may not comply with the Digital Markets Act that seeks to restrain the dominance of Big Tech companies.
Monday’s announcement marks the first time the Commission obtains binding commitments from a major online platform and closes an investigation under the DSA. It opened its probe into the new TikTok Lite reward feature in April.
The EU enforcers said at the time the program could be harmful to the mental health of users and in breach of the DSA. The Commission also believed TikTok may not be able to correctly identify underage users, meaning teenagers could have also used the feature and spend more time on the viral video app. TikTok failed to provide the Commission with information on the risks of the new feature, officials added.
TikTok later said it would temporarily stop the feature in the EU.
The company, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, still faces a probe opened in February over insufficiently protecting teenagers on its apps, including through an allegedly addictive algorithm and inadequate mechanisms to check users’ ages.
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