Brussels’ accusation of TikTok over its addictive design could be a wake-up call for other social platforms too
The ongoing tug of war between the European Commission and TikTok could pave the way for new design standards for other social platforms too. If for Brussels, as established last week, the design of TikTok creates addiction with the infinite scrolling of images and videos, it is not excluded that the same finding could involve Facebook and Instagram.
The changes requested by the Commission
Taking a step back, on February 6, the European Commission preliminarily contested the violation of the Digital Services Act by the Chinese company, arguing that TikTok’s design creates addiction, especially among younger people. And it therefore asked the social giant to modify some features: from deactivating continuous scrolling of images and videos to setting pauses in the time spent in front of the screen. The Commission also highlighted how difficult it is currently to introduce parental controls into the app. The ball has passed to TikTok since it will be able to examine the results of the Brussels investigation and contest them. But if it does not satisfy the Commission’s requests, the Chinese giant could incur fines of up to 6% of its annual global turnover.
The unprecedented turning point
This is the first time that the Commission has expressed its opinion on the design of a social app under the Digital Services Act. And it could also have a boomerang effect on Facebook and Instagram which have already, since May 2024, been under investigation for their alleged addictive effect. And in this regard, the researcher at the Interface think tank, Lena-Maria Böswald, declared a Political: “The findings mark a turning point” as “the Commission is treating addictive design on social media as an actionable risk” under the Digital Services Act. And the consultant of the European digital rights association (EDRi), Jan Penfrat, underlined the fact that the Brussels initiative could also extend to Meta: it would be “very, very strange if the Commission did not use this case as a model and did not also proceed against other companies”.
Possible developments
According to the opinion of the experts consulted by PoliticalBrussels could agree with the social platforms on a series of changes. Penfrat also explained that TikTok may not immediately be able to “do the right thing” in Brussels’ vision. However, as noted by the associate director of the Knight-Georgetown institute, Peter Chapman, the changes could affect “the default settings”, but also “the prohibition of a specific functionality”. However, he stressed that the changes could be adapted according to the functionality of each platform: while sharing similar design elements, the purposes may be different. In this regard, he explained that message notifications and live streaming notifications have a different risk of addiction.
