The European Commission has officially accused Meta and TikTok of insufficient control over prohibited content on their networks and limiting access to data for researchers
The European Commission said on Friday that Instagram and Facebook lack a simple mechanism available for people to quickly flag and report terrorist material, child sexual abuse images and other illegal content.
The European Commission also believes that TikTok and Meta do not provide scientists and researchers with sufficient and convenient access to their data. Due to these obstacles, researchers often receive only incomplete or unreliable information. This directly affects their ability to check whether users, especially minors, are exposed to illegal or harmful content.
Meta and TikTok have the opportunity to respond in writing to the allegations or correct the identified deficiencies.
The European Digital Services Act requires companies to be much more vigilant about what happens on their platforms. If they break the rules, they could face fines of up to 6% of their global annual revenue. The EU has never used these fines in practice.
A new European Digital Services Act, which comes into effect in November 2022, requires major online services to step up their fight against banned content, threats to citizens’ security and fraudulent activities. However, US President Donald Trump has previously threatened to impose higher tariffs on countries he says are “crushing” American companies.
