Brussels Goes After the Algorithm Itself: TikTok's For You Feed Breached the DSA, Commission Says

The European Commission issued preliminary findings on 6 November that TikTok breached the Digital Services Act through the design of its For You recommendation system, opening a path to fines of up to 6 per cent of the company's global annual turnover.

The finding is the third the Commission has made against TikTok this year and the first to target the recommendation algorithm rather than the features layered on top of it, according to a senior EU official quoted by AFP.

What the Commission says happens

"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," said Henna Virkkunen, the Executive Vice-President overseeing tech sovereignty. "Today's preliminary findings show again that TikTok needs to step up its efforts to protect users' well-being, including those of minors."

The Commission's case is that the recommender produces "endless" exposure to content about sadness, isolation or body image, and that the pattern is structurally harmful rather than incidental. It acknowledged TikTok had made some changes to mitigate the risks but judged them insufficient.

Brussels wants viewing time demoted as a ranking signal. That sounds technical and is not. Engagement optimisation is the commercial engine of the product, and removing time-watched from the ranking logic changes what the feed is for.

The pattern of findings

February: the Commission found TikTok had not adequately assessed how addictive features could harm the physical and mental well-being of users, including minors and vulnerable adults. That decision concerned notifications and design choices.

July: the Commission accused TikTok of exposing children to cyberbullying and predatory behaviour. In the same month it ordered Meta to change the feeds on Facebook and Instagram under the same regulation.

Friday's finding is the step from the surrounding design to the engine. Read as a sequence, the Commission has spent 2026 building the argument that recommendation systems are covered by the DSA's risk obligations, and this is the test case.

TikTok's answer

The company rejected the findings outright. They are "fundamentally inaccurate and distort our platform's architecture and our commitment to user safety", a spokesperson said, adding that TikTok has "a strong record of protecting our community while giving users direct and intuitive control over their content experience".

TikTok now has the opportunity to respond in writing and to request an oral hearing before the Commission reaches a final decision. That process has taken between six and twelve months in previous DSA cases, and the outcome can be a binding decision with a compliance deadline and periodic reporting obligations rather than a fine alone.

Why 6 per cent matters more as a number than a fine

The 6 per cent ceiling is the maximum the DSA allows, and it is calculated on global turnover, which for TikTok's parent ByteDance is a figure in the tens of billions of dollars. The Commission has not yet indicated it intends to go that high. What the ceiling does is set the negotiating weight of the remedy: a compliance order attached to a 6 per cent exposure is not a suggestion.

The wider significance is jurisdictional. The Commission is regulating how a Chinese-owned platform ranks content for European users, on the theory that the ranking itself is a systemic risk. Other regulators have reached for the same conclusion. Australia's proposed opt-out law targets recommendation algorithms directly, and several member states have banned social media for under-15s on harm grounds that the DSA process now partly corroborates.

The practical question for the roughly quarter of a billion Europeans who use the app is narrower and harder: whether a feed that stops optimising for time spent is still a feed anyone watches for two hours, and whether Brussels has the appetite to find out.