Video recommendations for TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat investigated by the European Commission

TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat must answer questions from the European Commission about how their video recommendation algorithms work, the EU executive announced on Wednesday (October 2).

The investigation, carried out under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), examines why vulnerable people are fed fake election-related news or content that glorifies eating disorders, depression and substance abuse.

The Commission is interested in the impact of features such as autoplay and infinite scrolling, and the safeguards that platforms must take to prevent the spread of harmful content.

Under the DSA, the largest online platforms with more than 45 million monthly users must meet strict transparency requirements.

A senior EU official said the investigation should serve as a “wake-up call” for platforms to change their behavior – for example, by allowing users to hide certain types of videos.

Websites that fail to provide documents or provide false information face fines under EU law.

However, the investigation is only a first step and the EU executive will decide whether to launch a formal procedure after analyzing the responses.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is not the subject of this specific inquiry, but in May the Commission began a separate investigation into whether these networks' interfaces exploit children's inexperience to encourage addictive behavior.

The EU already has investigations underway against TikTok, the social media network X and the Chinese online retailer AliExpress. A senior commission official said last month that further investigations into alleged non-compliance with the DSA would soon follow.