The European Commission has found that social media giants Meta and TikTok breached data access obligations under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), it announced on Friday.
Both Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok were found to have preliminarily broken rules aimed at ensuring that they grant researchers access to public data on their platforms.
Separately, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook have breached the DSA’s rules for “Notice and Action” mechanisms. The platforms’ provisions for reporting problems with content were not user-friendly enough. Meta was also found to have used so-called “dark patterns” – aka deceptive design practices banned under the DSA – which the Commission said could dissuade reports.
Meta also failed to comply with DSA rules on how it should handle user complaints against its content decisions, per the Commission’s preliminary findings.
The Commission opened a DSA probe on TikTok back in February 2024, while it’s been formally probing Meta since April 2024.
Both companies now have the chance to respond to the findings but should today’s decisions be confirmed by the Commission they could face fines of up to 6% of their global turnover.
Both blocking researchers’ data access
Both companies were found to have failed to comply with DSA rules requiring that they support researchers to access platform data. The Commission said that Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok placed “burdensome” requirements on researchers seeking to access data.
“This often leaves them with partial or unreliable data,” it added in a press release.
The unlawful friction in the data request process made it harder for researchers to look at whether users are exposed to illegal or harmful content, the Commission suggested.
The EU’s executive has also clarified the conditions under which certain researchers can be “vetted” – meaning they can request access to internal platform data – via a delegated act that comes into effect next week. The Commission said these “new possibilities” will grant non-public data from large platforms (so-called VLOPs) to vetted researchers.
Meta’s dark patterns
On the finding that Meta’s platforms were flouting the DSA by not providing an accessible “Notice and Action” mechanism for users to flag illegal content, the Commission said Facebook and Instagram’s mechanisms contained dark patterns that meant the process of flagging illegal content for removal was ineffective.
Meta was also found to have breached the DSA appeal procedure. The Commission said Facebook and Instagram did not appear to have provided users with adequate explanations when their content or accounts were taken down.
(nl)
