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TikTok’s Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew was asked on Thursday to tell the European Commission within 24 hours how it is protecting children and teenagers from violent content and misinformation around the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The letter by Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton is the latest of a series of public calls to chiefs of popular social media platforms to lay out the measures they have taken to stem the spread of false information and violent content depicting hostage-taking following the gruesome attacks in Israel over the weekend.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter) also received letters. The EU’s pressure comes as part of the European Union’s content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Breton urged the TikTok CEO to “urgently step up your efforts,” adding that potentially illegal content was circulating on the platform “despite flags from relevant authorities.” Instance of manipulated images like repurposed videos of festivals have also been picked up by public media and third-party sources, Breton wrote.
The DSA requires platforms like TikTok and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram to quickly take down illegal content like incitement to violence or propaganda for terrorist organizations and limit disinformation, or else face a fine of up to 6 percent of its annual global revenue.
The European Commission will also reach out shortly to TikTok with a specific request “on a number of other issues of DSA compliance that deserve immediate attention, including potentially life-threatening content,” he said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
