TikTok ‘stress test’ shows it’s not ‘fully ready’ for looming EU social media rules, commissioner says

By Brian Fung, CNN

Washington (CNN) — TikTok has “more work” to do to meet tough new European standards that are coming for social media and content moderation, according to a top EU official who performed a “stress test” of the company this week.

The report by EU Commissioner Thierry Breton comes ahead of a looming Aug. 25 deadline for platforms such as TikTok to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) — a package of regulations aimed at battling misinformation, potential privacy abuses and illegal content, among other things.

European Commission staff conducted the TikTok test on Monday at the company’s Dublin offices, according to a statement from the commissioner, and Breton outlined the results of the voluntary inspection to CEO Shou Chew on Tuesday.

“TikTok is dedicating significant resources to compliance,” Breton said, pointing to changes TikTok has made to its recommendation algorithms and its transparency procedures as evidence the company appears to be taking its obligations seriously.

But, he added, the test results also showed “more work is needed to be fully ready for the compliance deadline.”

“Now it is time to accelerate to be fully compliant,” Breton said, indicating that officials will be revisiting at the end of the summer whether TikTok has closed the gap.

TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the test results.

TikTok isn’t the only large tech platform to submit to an EU stress test. Last month, European officials evaluated Twitter’s platform for DSA compliance and also announced plans to stress test Facebook-parent Meta’s services.

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