EU Commission opens formal proceedings against TikTok over child safety

The European Commission has opened formal proceedings against TikTok under the Digital Services Act for suspected breaches of obligations to protect minors, focusing on the platform's systems for age verification, default privacy settings for children, and the addictive design of its recommendation algorithm. The investigation will assess whether TikTok has done enough to prevent minors from accessing inappropriate content and whether its risk-assessment and mitigation measures meet DSA standards, with potential fines of up to six percent of global annual revenue.

Regulatory enforcement targeting systemic design failures in age verification and content recommendation underscores the gap between platform architecture and the duty to protect child users from harm. Guardii's anti-grooming module operates independently of a platform's native controls, monitoring direct-message conversations for patterns of sustained targeting, flattery, isolation and escalation that precede exploitation, and alerting a parent or school when a child is being conditioned for abuse, ensuring that detection is not contingent on the accuracy of a birthdate field or the integrity of an algorithm optimised for engagement rather than safety.