EU warns TikTok child safety protections must be default, not opt-in
The European Commission has outlined specific adjustments required for TikTok’s account visibility and content recommendation systems, echoing parallel regulatory scrutiny in the United Kingdom.
The European Commission has issued preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act, asserting that TikTok must implement high-level safety protections for minors by default, rather than requiring users to opt-in. The Commission recommends that default settings for minors’ public accounts be adjusted to limit visibility to chosen users only, and that such content be removed from the “For You” feed. Additionally, the Commission noted that private accounts remain discoverable via following lists and that profile photos are visible to anyone.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen emphasised that platforms must embed these protections into service design. “A high level of protection should not be an opt-in; it should be the default,” Virkkunen said in the announcement. “Minors deserve a safe experience from the moment they go online. The Digital Services Act requires platforms to build protections for minors into the design of their services, and holds them to account when they fail to do so.”
The regulatory body highlighted specific structural issues within the platform’s current architecture. Even accounts set to private can be easily discovered through the “following” lists of other users, and their profile photos can be seen by anyone. The Commission suggests that TikTok should adjust the default settings of minors’ public accounts so the content they post is only visible to TikTok users the teen has chosen to share it with, and that such content shouldn’t be recommended to other users in the For You feed.
Failure to address these concerns could result in a DSA non-compliance decision and fines of up to 6 per cent of TikTok’s global annual revenue. The findings are preliminary, meaning the final outcome and exact fine amounts remain undetermined, but the warning signals significant regulatory pressure on the social media giant to overhaul its privacy settings for underage users.
This action follows a parallel child safety investigation launched last week by the UK communications regulator, Ofcom. Updates from the UK probe are expected in October. Meanwhile, the EU’s separate probe to evaluate the addictive “rabbit hole effect” of TikTok’s recommender systems is still ongoing, indicating a broader regulatory focus on how algorithmic systems impact young users.
