TikTok Could Face Stricter EU Online Content Rules Under Digital Services Act

Chinese social media company TikTok is likely to be subject to stricter EU online content rules because its number of active users exceed a threshold set out under the Digital Services Act (DSA), a senior executive at the company said on Wednesday.

The landmark rules take a tougher line on very large online platforms, characterising these as companies with more than 45 million users.

Requirements for such companies include risk management obligations, external and independent auditing, sharing data with authorities and researchers and adopting a code of conduct.

Violations can result in fines of as much as 6 percent of a company's global turnover.

Online platforms and search engines are due to report their user numbers on February 17, allowing the European Commission to designate which are the very large online platforms and very large online search engines.

"We do expect that our EU user base will meet the quantitative criteria to be considered a very large online platform, but are still waiting for the designation process foreseen by the DSA to understand whether we will be classified as such," Caroline Greer, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, told Reuters.

In 2020, TikTok said its number of users in Europe topped 100 million.

A few days back, US Democratic Senator Michael Bennet said that TikTok should be removed from app stores run by Apple and Alphabet's Google as it poses a risk to national security. The app has has already been banned from federal government devices. In the US, TikTok faces a strict scrutiny because of concern that China's government could use it to harvest data on Americans or advance Chinese interests.

Prior to Bennet's letter, Republicans have largely led the charge on TikTok and national security concerns.

© Thomson Reuters 2023