TikTok's Protection of Minors Should Be Default, Not Opt-In, EU Warns
The European Commission has released preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act (DSA) regarding TikTok's protection of children on its platform. The findings identify specific concerns about how the video-sharing service handles minors' accounts and content visibility.
Key recommendations from the Commission include:
- Default visibility settings: The content minors post on "public" accounts should only be visible to users the teen has explicitly chosen to share with, rather than being publicly accessible by default.
- For You feed restrictions: Content from minors' accounts should not be recommended to other users through TikTok's algorithmic For You feed.
- Private account discoverability: Even accounts set to private can be found through other users' "following" lists, creating a loophole that undermines privacy protections.
The Commission argues that child safety measures should be built into the platform's default configuration rather than requiring teens or their parents to actively seek out and enable these protections. This follows the broader intent of the DSA, which places responsibility on platforms to protect vulnerable users through proactive design choices.
TikTok now has the opportunity to respond to these preliminary findings before any final determination is made under the regulation.