The European Commission threatened this Wednesday to ban the use of TikTok in the European Union, if those responsible for the social network do not prevent minors from having access to “potentially fatal” videos, reports the EFE agency.
The threat was made by the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, to TikTok’s managing director, Shou Zi Chew, during a videoconference meeting.
According to the commissioner’s office, Thierry Breton told the TikTok manager that more care should be taken with the young audience that uses that social network, stating that “it is not acceptable that behind an apparently fun and harmless environment” users can access easily to dangerous content. .
In this sense, the European commissioner called on Shou Zi Chew to respect the European data protection regulations, which with the new law on digital services must be complied with by the large platforms, at the latest, on September 1.
That standard will force these platforms to remove illegal content and improve transparency regarding the operation of the algorithms that determine what users can see on the internet.
Failure to comply could lead Brussels to impose fines equivalent to 6% of the global turnover of these platforms and even prohibit their permanence in the single market.
“We will not hesitate to apply these sanctions if our audits do not show full compliance,” Thierry Breton said, calling on TikTok’s chief executive officer to apply the directive well before September 1.
The United States has also shown concern about TikTok, and the US Congress prohibits lawmakers and their officials from installing the app on their official phones.
The controversy in the United States over the use of the Chinese application worsened after the revelation that ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, used the social network to “monitor the physical location of journalists using their IP addresses.”
Source: TSF
