dpa
Brussels
The European Commission on Monday ordered TikTok to submit an assessment of potential health risks related to its new app TikTok Lite within 24 hours or face daily fines.
The legally-binding order concerns the new app’s rewards scheme, which allows users to collect points by watching videos and exchange them for things of value, such as Amazon vouchers, according to commission officials.
The Chinese-owned company has 24 hours to show how it assessed the addictiveness and mental health risks of the scheme, particularly for children, prior to launch. The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) requires large platforms to assess and mitigate such risks.
The commission is also giving TikTok 48 hours to show that it has complied with the DSA and that there is no risk of serious harm, after which the EU executive could order the platform to suspend the feature allowing points to be exchanged, pending further investigation.
If TikTok doesn’t supply the risk assessment within 24 hours, it could face a fine of 1% of its global annual revenue, plus periodic fines of 5% of its daily revenue, commission officials said.
If the commission ultimately concludes that TikTok has violated the DSA’s risk assessment and mitigation rules, it could fine the company up to 6% of global annual revenue.
TikTok Lite, which is similar to the wildly popular TikTok app but uses less memory and bandwidth, had its European launch in Spain and France this month. Commission officials said they were notified of the new app, but TikTok has not provided a risk assessment.
Monday’s ultimatum is a tougher follow-up to an earlier request for the information that the commission sent on April 17, which had a non-binding deadline of April 18. Commission officials said TikTok responded to that request by telling them it had carried out a risk assessment, but that it could not share the document.
The officials declined to say whether or how the company had justified this refusal. Dpa has contacted TikTok for comment.
This is the first time the commission has issued a binding request for information under the DSA. Until now, companies have always complied with the initial non-binding requests, a commission official said.
The DSA’s risk-mitigation rules for Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) - those with more than 45 million monthly active users in the European Union - came into force in August 2023.
Currently-listed VLOPs include TikTok, X - formerly known as Twitter - and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.
A commission press release said the EU executive “is concerned that the ‘Task and Reward Program’ of TikTok Lite, which allows users to earn points while performing certain ‘tasks’ on TikTok - such as watching videos, liking content, following creators, inviting friends to join TikTok, etc - has been launched without prior diligent assessment of the risks it entails, in particular those related to the addictive effect of the platforms, and without taking effective risk mitigating measures.”
