The Commission’s preliminary Digital Services Act findings target product design rather than isolated harmful posts, making the case an important test of whether Brussels can require safer platforms by default.
The European Commission has preliminarily found that TikTok breached the Digital Services Act by failing to provide sufficiently safe default settings for minors.
According to the Commission’s official findings, children can make accounts public, allowing their material to be seen beyond a controlled circle. Content posted by users aged 16 or 17 may also be recommended through TikTok’s “For You” feed.
The Commission’s position is that accounts belonging to minors should, by default, limit visibility to people the child has accepted. Older minors may be permitted to choose wider visibility within the service, but their content should not be distributed to an unrestricted audience outside the platform or algorithmically recommended to strangers.
These remain preliminary conclusions. TikTok can examine the case file and reply, and the Commission must consider its defence before adopting a final decision. If the infringement is confirmed, the company could face a fine of up to 6 per cent of worldwide annual turnover and an order to change its service.
That procedural distinction matters. A statement of objections is not a final finding of liability. It does, however, explain the design standard Brussels expects a very large online platform to meet.
Safety by design
The case goes beyond removal of illegal or harmful content. It asks who can discover a child’s account, contact the user and amplify material before any report is made.
A public-by-choice model places the burden on minors and parents to understand privacy controls. A private-by-default model places the initial burden on the platform, while preserving age-appropriate choice. The DSA’s protection-of-minors provisions give the Commission a legal route to prefer the second approach.
Visibility has several dimensions. A profile may be searchable inside an app, its videos may enter a recommendation feed, and links may be viewed on the open web. Treating these settings as a single switch can obscure different risks.
Algorithmic recommendation is particularly important. A teenager who chooses to share a video with a broader community may not expect it to be delivered at scale to unknown adults. Recommendation systems can transform a limited act of publication into mass exposure without a conscious distribution decision by the child.
The Commission links unsafe visibility to unwanted contact, cyberbullying and other forms of harm. Its theory is preventive: the platform must reduce foreseeable exposure through default architecture instead of relying exclusively on reporting tools after an incident.
A test of the DSA’s reach
The DSA imposes additional obligations on very large online platforms because their scale and recommendation systems can create systemic risks. They must assess those risks, adopt proportionate mitigation and submit to independent scrutiny.
TikTok’s case will help define how specific the Commission can be. The law sets duties and principles, but platforms make thousands of design choices. Enforcement must show a clear connection between a feature, an identified risk and a proportionate remedy.
That is necessary for legal certainty. A blanket ban on minors sharing content could unnecessarily limit expression and participation. Conversely, a nominal privacy control is inadequate if the interface steers children towards public exposure or if recommendation settings undermine it.
The strongest remedy would separate age groups, audiences and distribution channels. It would use plain language, avoid manipulative prompts and require an affirmative choice before a minor expands visibility. It should also ensure that changing a setting does not silently enable other forms of distribution.
Verification without surveillance
Safer defaults raise the difficult question of how a platform knows who is a child. Age assurance can reduce circumvention, but collecting identity documents or biometric data creates privacy and security risks of its own.
The Commission must therefore judge systems by proportionality as well as effectiveness. A layered approach could combine neutral age signals, account-level protections and stronger checks only when a user attempts to access an age-restricted feature. Data should be minimised and retained no longer than necessary.
Parents also need realistic expectations. No setting can eliminate every harmful interaction. Defaults should be accompanied by accessible blocking, reporting and contact controls, as well as explanations that children can understand.
Enforcement beyond one platform
The decision will be watched by other social networks, video services and gaming platforms. If Brussels establishes that recommendation of minors’ content to unknown users is incompatible with the DSA, comparable services may need to redesign their defaults.
Consistency will be essential. The Commission should publish enough reasoning to let other providers apply the standard without exposing sensitive information that could help users evade safeguards.
EU Today’s coverage of the Commission’s DMA action against Google concerned competition rather than child safety, but the enforcement challenge is similar. A large fine attracts attention; effective product changes determine whether the law alters the market.
TikTok will be entitled to contest both the facts and the legal interpretation. It may argue that existing controls, parental tools and age-based settings adequately mitigate risk. The Commission must answer with evidence rather than assumptions about how teenagers use the service.
The case is consequently a test of the EU’s new digital rulebook at its most practical. Brussels is not merely asking a platform to remove prohibited material. It is asking it to redesign the conditions under which children become visible. If the final decision is legally robust and technically workable, it could establish a meaningful European standard: minors should not need expert knowledge of privacy menus to avoid being broadcast to the world.
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