JAKARTA The technology giants of the United States, Meta and social media applications belonging to China, TikTok, have violated their legal obligations to provide researchers with adequate access to public data. This was revealed, according to the initial findings of the investigation released by the European Commission on Friday, October 24.
The European Union is now further tightening scrutiny of major technology companies through the Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires large platforms such as social media and search engines to have a strong system in preventing the spread of illegal and harmful content.
A Meta spokesperson said the company disagreed with the assumption that it had violated the DSA. Meanwhile, TikTok stated that it remains committed to the principle of transparency.
“Providing researchers access to platform data is an important transparency obligation under the DSA, as this allows public scrutiny of potential platform impacts on people’s physical and mental health,” the European Commission said in a statement.
The Commission also added that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram do not appear to provide mechanisms that are easy to use and accessible to report illegal content, such as child sexual abuse material and terrorism content.
The Commission’s preliminary findings suggest that Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok may have implemented complicated procedures and tools that burden researchers in asking for access to public data, the EU executive agency wrote.
Meta is said to have a mechanism with a number of unnecessary additional steps as well as a misleading interface design. This kind of practice can confuse and deter users. As a result, the Meta mechanism for tagging and removing illegal content may be ineffective, the Commission added.
Meta And TikTok Threatened With Big Fines
The two companies are now given the opportunity to review the findings of the Commission and take corrective steps. The Commission confirmed that this initial result was not final.
A Meta spokesperson stated that the company will continue to negotiate with the European Commission. We have introduced changes in content reporting options, appeals, and data access tools since the DSA came into effect. We believe these measures have met the legal requirements in the European Union,” he said.
Meanwhile, a TikTok spokesperson said it was reviewing the findings. “However, the demand to relax data protection has actually caused tensions between DSA and GDPR,” he said, referring to the General Data Protection Regulation, EU data privacy regulations.
“If the two regulations cannot be fully complied with simultaneously, we urge regulators to provide clarity on how to reconcile these obligations,” he added.
If the results of the Commission’s investigation are confirmed through further consultation, these companies could be fined up to 6 percent of their total annual global income.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language.
(system supported by DigitalSiber.id)