European Union Asks TikTok To Increase Elimination Of Illegal Content Post Hamas Attack

Head of EU Industry Commissioner (EU), Thierry Breton (photo: Twitter @ThierryBreton)

JAKARTA - Head of EU Industry Commissioner (EU), Thierry Breton, on Thursday 12 October reminded TikTok of the disinformation spread on its platform following a Hamas attack on Israel last week. TikTok was given 24 hours to increase efforts to remove illegal and harmful content from the short video app to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA, which took effect in November last year, forced large online platforms and search engines to be more active in dealing with illegal content and risks to public security, and protecting their services from manipulative engineering.

Breton's warning to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew follows a similar letter to X (formerly Twitter) owned by Elon Musk and Meta Platforms led by Mark Zuckerberg earlier this week. Breton then posted the letter on the Bluesky social media platform.

In his letter to TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance from China, Breton indicated that the platform was used to spread illegal and disinformation content in the EU after the Hamas attack.

"Because your platform is widely used by children and adolescents, you have a special obligation to protect them from violent content that describes hostage-taking and other graphical videos that are reportedly widely circulated on your platform without suitable protection," he said.

The EU industry commissioner stated that the rules related to content moderation were clear in the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) and outlined certain obligations in his letter.

CEO X, Linda Yaccarino, revealed that X has removed hundreds of Hamas-related accounts and is taking action to remove or label tens of thousands of content since the attack on Israel. DSA violations can be sanctioned up to 6% of the company's global turnover