On 29th of February 2024, the Romanian news website Știripesurse.ro published a news article, “Von der Leyen does not exclude banning TikTok in the EU if she is re-elected as head of the European”, in the context of the European elections. Von der Leyen, the candidate for the presidency of the European Commission and its current president, highlighted, among other issues, that the European Commission was “the first institution in the world” to ban TikTok on corporate phones and she knows “exactly the danger of TikTok” and “has done a lot” to regulate the services of the platform. The Romanian media outlet Știripesurse.ro covers a diverse category of topics, such as internal and external politics, 2024 elections, economy, health, social, sport and news from Moldova as well. According to the recording of the Maastricht debate, the quotes were correctly cited in the news article. Ursula von der Leyen, if to be more exact, put emphasis on the fact that they were the “very” first institution in the world.
Who was the first institution in the world to ban TikTok?
Ursula von der Leyen made a statement that the European Commission was “the first institution in the world” to ban TikTok on corporate phones. However, this assertion is not entirely accurate. On June 29, 2020 Government of India implemented a ban, when they prohibited 59 mobile apps, including TikTok, mentioning dangers to public order, national security, sovereignty, and integrity. Afghanistan passed a similar initiative on April 21, 2022, when the Taliban government instructed the Communications and Information Technology Ministry to restrict access to TikTok and other digital platforms, labeling them as sources of immoral content.
Furthermore, on 6th of March, 2023, Denmark’s Minister of Defense also banned TikTok as a safeguard against cyber threats, following a recommendation from the Center for Cyber Security (CFCS) on 24 February 2023. But the European Commission decided on the 23rd of February, 2023 to ban TikTok on corporate devices to ensure better security. Taking into consideration the data above, the European Commission was only one among of the first institutions in the world to ban the platform on corporate phones.
What has the European Commission done to regulate the services of TikTok?
Ursula Von Der Leyen also stressed that under her leadership, the community executive “has done a lot” to regulate services to ensure that platforms are responsible for the content they provide and that big companies do not act as guardians of the entrances on the digital market.
On 23 February 2023, the governing board of the European Commission decided to suspend the Tiktok application on both corporate and personal devices registered with the Commission’s mobile device service. This decision indicates an active effort to protect the Commission’s data and enhance cyber security, which is in line with the commitment to regulation and accountability of digital services.
Furthermore, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen confirmed that Tiktok’s data transfers are currently under investigation and the subject of several ongoing proceedings. These include an investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission into Tiktok’s compliance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) requirements regarding data transfer to China and the processing of data of minors.
In addition to these measures, a member of the EU Parliament, Moritz Körner, from Germany has raised concerns about data access from China. These concerns are supported by a letter in which Ursula Von Der Leyen confirmed that Tiktok’s data transfers are the subject of investigations.
However, it is important to note that an open investigation is not the same as a regulation. Besides being part of the Digital Services Act, which is labeled as a “very large platform together with other platforms (thus being obliged to comply with the Single Market for Digital Services policy), a proper rule on specifically regulating TikTok platform is not in force so far. Also, the investigation that is ongoing since February 2024, is the first of this formal proceeding against TikTok.
Also, it is hard to define what is the measurement for “a lot”, and thus hard to appreciate the statement as true or false.
What are the dangers of TikTok?
As Ursula von der Leyen stated at the Maastricht debate, the European Commission “knows exactly the danger of TikTok”. The 19th of February of this year, the EC opened an investigation into TikTok over a “suspected breach of transparency & obligations to protect minors”, said Thierry Breton (European Commissioner for Internal Market) on X the same day. Breton pointed out its addictive design and screen time limits, the rabbit hole effect, the age verification and the default privacy settings.
As the former page European Commission Representation in Cyprus stated the 19th of February, the European Commission opened formal proceedings against TikTok under the Digital Services Act, which should ensure a fairer and safer online world, to assess whether TikTok may have breached the Digital Services Act. The head areas were the protection of minors, data access for researchers, advertising transparency and the risk management of addictive design and harmful content.
In the article mentioned above, published on April 29th, it’s pointed out that the European Commission detected that the new application ‘TikTok Lite’ was launched without first publishing the risk analysis report required by the European law regarding digital services. According to the official European Commission site, a press release from 17th of April 2024 proves the information request is correct.
Graham Webster, professor at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, pointed out that “there’s no evidence of mass opinion manipulation, there’s no evidence of bulk data collection yet” even though “it’s not totally impossible that it’s happened or that it could happen in the future”. So, it’s proven that the statement is true.
Conclusion
Taking everything into account, the claim made by Ursula von der Leyen at the Maastricht Debate is mostly true. Even though the European Commission wasn’t the first institution in the world to ban TikTok, it was among the first to decide to ban it specifically on corporate phones. Regarding the multiple regulations invoked in order to regulate the services of the platform, it is true that the European Commission implemented the Digital Service Act, which ensures the safety of its users, as well as opening an investigation following TikTok’s compliance with the DSA agreements. As for the statement about the dangers of TikTok, it is true, experts’ opinions confirming that the app could be dangerous in many areas.
RESEARCH | ARTICLE | Irina Mare, Babeș-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), Rosie Lambeir, Thomas More (Mechelen, Belgium), Maria Trilla, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) and Elene Goshadze, GIPA, (Tbilisi,Georgia) with lecturer coach Svitlana Bezchotnikova (Mariupol State University, Ukraine).
This factcheck was produced during the Blended Intensive Programme EU Elections Lab at the School of Journalism in Utrecht, The Netherlands
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