TikTok owner ByteDance could face a fine as large as 6% of global turnover if it refuses a European Union order to fix so-called “rabbit hole” algorithms that are designed to lure users into watching ever-more-targeted content, The Guardian reported.
On Friday, the European Commission (EC, the EU’s executive branch) said its investigation had determined that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm violates the Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires that big tech firms take actions to protect users from certain types of harm. While there’s no dispute about the legality of the specific content in question, the EC argued that TikTok hasn’t sufficiently assessed or addressed the harms that result from continually feeding it to users, like the exacerbation of mental or eating disorders. Think “thinspo” or “SkinnyTok,” the latter of which TikTok banned last year.
Regulators called out TikTok in particular for funneling young and/or vulnerable users towards content featuring topics like body image and isolation. The Guardian noted a recent survey by the Molly Rose Foundation, named after a 14-year-old whose father said Instagram led to her 2017 suicide, found almost half of girls and one third of all UK teenagers had seen social media content featuring suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders within the last week. An increasingly large body of research has associated rumination, or repetitive, hamster wheel-style thought loops dwelling on negative experiences and emotions, on social media with various harmful psychological outcomes.
The research is far from settled. One study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Computational Social Science Lab that attempted to model YouTube’s impact on users was published last year. Findings suggested that users, not algorithms, may be driving “filter bubble” effects (exposure to echo chambers of content) and that rabbit holes don’t push viewers towards more extreme political views. That study didn’t attempt to measure whether rabbit holes on other kinds of topics, like body image, could push users towards more extreme and negative perceptions of self, though.
The Record noted that an internal TikTok review obtained by Bloomberg last year found that Chase Nasca, an American 16-year-old who committed suicide in 2022 after watching streams of videos themed around sadness and self-harm, had been sorted into the 10% of TikTok users in a control group that did not receive updates designed to prevent harmful rabbit holes.
The EC made it clear it views rabbit hole recommendations as a way for TikTok to make money.
“We are addressing a business model,” an EC official told reporters, according to the Guardian.
“Every time a user scrolls or likes a video on TikTok, the algorithm serves more of the same, leading users down rabbit holes they cannot easily escape from,” Henna Virkkunen, the EC’s lead official on tech policy, told The Guardian in a statement. “TikTok needs to step up its efforts to protect users’ wellbeing, including those of minors.”
“The commission has made a series of statements that are fundamentally inaccurate and distort our platform’s architecture and our commitment to user safety,” a TikTok person shot back to the paper. “We have a strong record of protecting our community while giving users direct and intuitive control over their content experience.”
The investigation’s findings are not a surprise, as it’s only one part of a broader effort from European officials going after TikTok. The EC issued preliminary decisions that TikTok’s infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and personalized recommendation algorithm were all likely violations of the DSA back in February 2026. (At the time, Reuters noted, TikTok called the findings “categorically false.”)
On Friday, TikTok joined Google and Meta in filing separate lawsuits against the U.S. state of California over a law that bans social media platforms from offering “psychologically exploitative features” to users under 16.
This article contains discussions of suicide. If you or someone you know is having a crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.
