EU regulators focus on TikTok’s privacy defaults for minors
The European Commission has sent TikTok preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act, saying the platform’s accounts for minors may not meet the law’s required safety standard. The selected source, The Verge, reported the development on July 24, 2026, based on the Commission’s announcement.
The central issue is not whether TikTok offers safety controls somewhere in the app. It is whether the service protects minors by default. According to the Commission’s official notice, minors on TikTok can choose to make an account public, and that setting can allow content to be visible to other users, including people without a TikTok account. The Commission also says content from older minors, ages 16 to 17, can be recommended to other users through the For You Feed when those accounts are public.
The Commission’s preliminary view is that TikTok should adjust default settings so minors’ public-account content is visible only to users the minor has accepted. It also says minors’ content should not be accessible to a global audience outside the platform and should not be recommended through the For You Feed.
Why default design matters
The case is a useful example of how platform regulation is moving from policy pages toward interface design. Under the DSA, the European Commission says online services such as social networks must create a safer and more trustworthy digital environment. The Commission’s DSA overview also says the biggest online platforms have specific duties to identify and reduce systemic risks, including risks linked to the protection of minors and physical and mental wellbeing.
That makes defaults important. A privacy control that exists but requires a young user to find, understand, and maintain it may not satisfy regulators if the surrounding design still exposes the user broadly. The Commission’s message is that protection for minors should be built into the product experience from the start, not treated as an optional switch.
If the preliminary findings are confirmed after TikTok responds, the Commission could issue a non-compliance decision under the DSA. The potential maximum fine under the DSA can reach up to 6% of a company’s global annual revenue, but that is a legal ceiling, not a prediction of what will happen in this case.
What happens next
This is not a final decision. TikTok can review the findings and respond before the Commission decides whether to proceed. The Associated Press reported that TikTok said it shares the goal of protecting minors online and will continue engaging with the Commission.
For TikTok, the practical pressure is likely to fall on account visibility, recommendation eligibility, and how easy it is for younger users to move from a limited audience to a public one. For other major social platforms, the signal is broader: regulators are scrutinizing whether child-safety settings work as product defaults, not just whether they are available.
The Verge also noted that the EU’s separate examination of TikTok’s recommender-system risks remains ongoing. That means this latest finding sits within a wider European push to test how social platforms design feeds, age-appropriate protections, and risk controls for younger users.
What readers should watch
The next important step is TikTok’s formal response and any concrete changes to default account settings in the EU. Watch for whether minors’ posts become visible only to accepted contacts by default, whether public discovery is restricted more tightly, and whether minors’ content is removed from broad recommendation surfaces.
The larger lesson is straightforward: in regulated markets, privacy and child safety increasingly depend on product architecture. For large platforms, compliance may now require changing the default path users experience, not simply adding more settings.