On 24th October, the European Union indicated that Meta and Tit Tok had violated their transparency requirements following an inquiry which may lead to billions of dollars in fines.
The investigation established that both companies had broken the Digital Services Act, the pioneer digital rule book in the EU, which establishes a set of strict rules that have been designed to protect internet users by ensuring that they can easily report fake or dangerous products or report harmful or illegal information such as hate speech, as well as that the companies must not run advertisements that target children.
According to a post on X, Henna Virkunnen, the EU executive vice president of tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said. “platforms are held accountable by the EU law to users and the society toward their services. Our democracies are based on trust. It is to say that the platforms have to enable users, acknowledge their rights, and allow their systems to be viewed. The DSA renders it an obligation and not an option.”
In 2024 the 27-nation bloc initiated an inquiry into both Tik Tok and Meta. They established that the companies did not enable easy access to the data by the researchers. They also discovered that the Instagram and Facebook pages of Meta do not allow users to easily label illegal content and easily appeal the decision made by the moderators. A statement made by the European Commission, the executive body of the EU said.
“This is a crucial requirement of the DSA that requires researchers access to the data of platforms because it gives us a chance to scrutinize the potential effect of the platforms on our physical and mental wellbeing”. The investigation discovered that both Facebook and Instagram used “dark patterns icons” or misleading interface designs as its content flagging procedure in child sex abuse or terrorist material. That resulted in some sort of rhetoric, at least in the words of the Commission, it was confusing and dissuading and thus could be ineffective.
Meta spokesperson Ben Walters stated that the company does not agree with the results yet it would still keep on negotiating with the EU with regard to compliance. He said, “We have made amendments to our content reporting choices, data access tools, and appeals process since the introduction of the DSA and are certain that the amendments adhere to the requirements outlined in the law in the EU.”
On Friday, TikTok announced that it will examine the conclusions, but claimed that the transparency provisions of the DSA are at odds with the stringent privacy legislation of the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation. “In case of inability to comply with both, we would like the regulators to give us an idea of how these obligations are to be resolved,” TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino said.
Meta and Tik Tok are now able to submit a response to the query. Eventually, the EU may impose penalties amounting to up to 6 percent of the annual profits of the companies, which may be in the billions.
