Italy’s competition authority has fined TikTok €10 million ($11 million) for failing to control the spread of content that it said threatened the safety of minors and other vulnerable people.
The antitrust agency, AGCM, said Thursday that TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, had failed to take into account the specific vulnerabilities of adolescents using its platform, such as a tendency toward copying group behaviors.
The watchdog announced an investigation into TikTok’s content moderation practices last March.
In a statement Thursday, it said the video-sharing platform “has not taken adequate measures to avoid the spread of (harmful) content,” adding that its algorithms meant such content could be “systematically re-proposed to users.”
An example of harmful content mentioned by the AGCM is what is known as the “French scar” trend, which involved TikTok users pinching their own cheeks to leave a lasting bruise.
A TikTok spokesperson told CNN that it disagreed with the AGCM’s decision. “The so-called ‘French scar’ content averaged just 100 daily searches in Italy prior to the AGCM’s announcement last year, and we long ago restricted visibility of this content to (under-18s).”
