The European Commission has provisionally found that TikTok's recommendation engine violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) because it makes users "want to keep scrolling through the feed".
If TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, fails to resolve the issue, TikTok could be fined up to 6% of its total annual revenue next year.
The European Commission claims that TikTok's recommendation system suffers from the so-called "rabbit hole effect", where users become increasingly accustomed to a constant stream of similar content and cannot disconnect from it. The more a user interacts with a certain type of content, the more similar content will be offered to them through TikTok's main "For You" section.
In Europe, TikTok has almost 200 million users. In a statement, TikTok denied the allegations, saying: "The EU's allegations are fundamentally untrue and misrepresent the architecture of our platform and our commitment to user safety. We have a solid track record of protecting our users and giving them direct and intuitive control over their content viewing experience. ".
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