Social networks are growing faster nowadays. It took Facebook eight years to reach 1 billion users, but TikTok was there in just five years. The burgeoning short video app was also pressured at a younger age by political and regulatory concerns over its Chinese ownership and impact on teen mental health.
The pressure on TikTok is now set to jump even higher. The Digital Services Act (DSA) recently passed by the European Union imposes new restrictions on the largest platforms, in response to how established platforms such as Facebook and YouTube have been used to undermine elections, promote genocide and spread dangerous conspiracy theories. But the new rules are likely to bring bigger changes on TikTok than on more established platforms.
To date, TikTok is less transparent and well-studied than Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. That’s partly because it’s a much younger service and fewer researchers and journalists have scrutinized its operation. But TikTok also failed to provide tools to allow researchers to study how content circulates on its platform like Facebook and Twitter have done. When Europe’s new rules force all major social platforms to open up their data and even algorithms to outside scrutiny, our understanding of TikTok could change the most.
The DSA aims to reduce online harms such as harassment and make major online platforms more accountable for their effects on elections and other aspects of society, with major social networks and search engines the primary targets. The law was agreed at the end of last month, weeks after the passing of an accompanying technology monopoly law. “With today’s agreement, we are ensuring that platforms are held accountable for the risks their services may pose to society and citizens,” said Margarethe Vestager, Vice-President of the European Commission, when the DSA was approved. The legal text of the law is now being finalized and the DSA could come into effect as early as January 2024. Like the European data protection law, the GDPR, the DSA could change the way technology companies around the world operate.
Previous drafts of the DSA and details confirmed after negotiations are concluded make it clear that the law will force major changes in the way social networks work. The most severe measures are reserved for platforms with more than 45 million active users in the EU. TikTok said in 2020 that it had more than 100 million users in Europe.
TikTok declined to answer questions about what changes it would need to make to comply with the DSA. Spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said TikTok welcomed the DSA’s “focus on transparency as a means of demonstrating accountability” and that the company “planned” its work “to build trust by promoting transparency” with its users.
Experts say so far that the necessary transparency has been lacking. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed both the power and inscrutability of TikTok. Shortly after the war started in February, TikTok became central to the spread of video footage and rumors of the war. But researchers at nonprofits and in academia can’t easily track how such content is spreading, because the company doesn’t offer researchers APIs to study the platform like Facebook and Twitter do. Social media research collective Tracking Exposed had to use software that surfs TikTok and creates scapes to discover how the company was quietly limiting the content available to users in Russia.
The DSA’s requirements for large platforms could provide a much more complete picture of future emergencies occurring online. A “crisis mechanism” in the law allows the European Commission to order the largest platforms to restrict certain content in response to a safety or health emergency. The DSA also requires major platforms to provide “audited” outside researchers at all times with access to data necessary to study online risks. “Data access is a game changer,” said Alex Engler, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, which studies the social impact of algorithms. “It will allow for a systematic evaluation of the actual outcomes and impacts of these platforms and could change the societal understanding we can have in these public squares.”
