TikTok could be forced to change app’s ‘addictive design’ by European Commission
TikTok could be forced into changes to make the app less addictive to users after the EU indicated the platform had breached the bloc’s digital safety rules.The EU’s executive arm said in a preliminary ruling that the popular app had infringed the Digital Services Act (DSA) due to its “addictive design”.The European Commission said TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users worldwide, had not adequately assessed how its design could harm the physical and mental wellbeing of users including children and vulnerable adults.By constantly “rewarding” users with new content, the Chinese-owned platform fuelled constant scrolling and shifted the brains of users into “autopilot mode”, the commission added, which could lead to compulsive behaviour and reduce users’ self-control.The preliminary ruling accused TikTok of ignoring indicators of compulsive use, such as the amount of time children spend on the app at night.
The commission said it was considering forcing changes to the app’s design, including alterations to its powerful algorithm that pushes content to users.“At this stage, the commission considers that TikTok needs to change the basic design of its service,” it said in a statement.“For instance, by disabling key addictive features such as ‘infinite scroll’ over time, implementing effective ‘screen time breaks’, including during the night, and adapting its recommender system.”The commission said TikTok’s safety regime appeared to be inadequate, singling out the screentime management and parental control tools as not doing enough to mitigate the risks created by the app’s addictive design.The screentime management features were too easy to dismiss and parental controls were time-draining to install, the preliminary ruling added.
The commission said its preliminary views did not prejudge the outcome of the investigation and TikTok would have the opportunity to challenge its findings.Online safety campaigners have urged politicians to tackle features on social media platforms that encourage users to stay online.The crossbench peer and online safety campaigner Beeban Kidron, a leading voice in the UK debate, has urged the British government to “detoxify the dopamine loops” of addictive social media platforms.Breaches of the DSA can result in a fine totalling up to 6% of a company’s annual turnover, as well as the imposition of remedies such as an app redesign.TikTok does not publish its revenues, but according to estimates from the World Advertising Research Centre it will post revenues of $35bn (£26bn) this year.
TikTok said it rejected the commission’s findings,“The commission’s preliminary findings present a categorically false and entirely meritless depiction of our platform, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to challenge these findings through every means available to us,” a spokesperson for the company said,Last year Elon Musk’s X was fined €120m (£104m) for a breach of the DSA in the first-ever fine under the legislation,The breaches included what the EU said was a “deceptive” blue-tick verification badge given to users, and impeding research around what adverts the platform had hosted,
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It was the one scandal that Donald Trump seemed unable to shake. No matter his best efforts to convince his supporter base that there was nothing to see here, the demands for the administration to release every document it had on the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein only grew.Yet even after the most shocking revelations in the latest drop about Trump’s inner circle – involving everyone from Elon Musk to the Maga honcho Steve Bannon to the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, not to mention Trump himself – so far, it seems, the administration has escaped largely unscathed. Nobody has resigned, nobody has been fired, and certainly there is no sign that the US president is going anywhere.There is, however, one political establishment that the Epstein scandal has shaken to its core – in the UK, where revelations in the files have sent a shock wave through the governing party that threatens to topple it entirely
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Lord Triesman obituary
The wide-ranging diversity of the employment and pursuits in the packed public life of David Triesman, Lord Triesman, who has died aged 82, was fuelled by a visionary idealism he first displayed as a teenage schoolboy and which he thereafter sustained throughout a rollercoaster ride in sport, business and politics.He began his working life as an academic, spent nearly two decades as a trade union leader, ran the Labour party as general secretary for two years in the troubled run-up to the Iraq war from 200103 and then became a government minister in the House of Lords. A qualified senior football referee who had played for Tottenham Hotspur’s youth team in the 1960s, he served as chair of the Football Association from 2008 to 2010. He remained an active member of the Lords and numerous public bodies, and in 2011 founded his own consultancy dealing in property and private equity.In a letter he wrote from Labour’s headquarters as general secretary in 2003, he sought to re-engage the political commitment of disaffected party members, after the early shine of the Blair government was dimmed with disillusion, by defining his own lifelong fervour for a fairer world
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