An investigation by Maldita.es found that TikTok failed to remove over 100 accounts promoting illegal drugs, despite removing individual videos reported under the EU's Digital Services Act. The findings highlight potential gaps in TikTok's content moderation and recommendation systems, raising concerns about its compliance with EU regulatory obligations.
The failure to remove accounts after confirming their content is illegal suggests a systemic weakness in TikTok's moderation workflow that could trigger formal European Commission enforcement. For the streaming and social video ecosystem, this highlights the rising technical burden of the Digital Services Act, where removing individual assets is no longer sufficient to satisfy risk mitigation requirements. If recommendation algorithms continue to surface prohibited content despite manual reports, regulators may demand deeper audits of the For You feed's underlying logic. Watch for the European Commission to issue a formal request for information regarding TikTok's account-level enforcement protocols and its January-June transparency data.
Broader regulatory scrutiny of video platforms is intensifying, with the EU KIDS Act proposal currently seeking to impose significant revenue-based fines for failures in protecting younger users from harmful content. Meanwhile, Ofcom fraudulent advertising codes are setting new precedents for proactive platform monitoring to combat illegal content, while digital platforms face algorithmic content curation scrutiny regarding their impact on user autonomy. As regulators demand more granular data, Meta, TikTok, and X challenge Ofcom over the scope of these oversight requests.
A Maldita.es investigation found that TikTok failed to deactivate over 100 accounts promoting illegal substances, despite removing individual videos. This highlights a systemic moderation failure under the EU Digital Services Act, as recommendation algorithms continued to surface prohibited content, potentially triggering formal European Commission enforcement and deeper audits of platform logic.
The investigation revealed that TikTok failed to deactivate over 100 accounts promoting illegal substances, even after individual videos were reported and removed.
TikTok removed 75% of the specific videos reported under the Digital Services Act, but the originating accounts remained active on the platform.
The failure to remove accounts suggests a systemic weakness in moderation workflows, which may lead the European Commission to demand audits of TikTok's recommendation algorithms.
The Digital Services Act requires platforms to implement effective risk mitigation, meaning that removing individual assets is no longer sufficient if the underlying profiles and algorithms continue to promote prohibited content.
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