EU to TikTok: Show Us Who’s Paying for Those Ads

The European Union is turning up the heat on TikTok. On Thursday, regulators accused the popular video-sharing platform of violating key provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to provide sufficient transparency around the ads it serves to its millions of users across Europe.

According to preliminary findings from the European Commission’s investigation, TikTok’s ad library falls short of DSA requirements, lacking crucial details about who funds advertisements, what audiences they target, and what content is being promoted.

The DSA, one of the world’s most ambitious attempts to regulate digital platforms, mandates that online services clearly disclose why users are seeing particular ads, who paid for them, and provide open access to this data for researchers and the public. The goal is to crack down on election disinformation, hybrid threat campaigns, and scam promotions — issues that have plagued social platforms in recent years.

But the Commission claims TikTok’s current ad repository is not fit for purpose. It prevents comprehensive searches and lacks transparency on ad content and targeting criteria, effectively limiting its usefulness as a tool for watchdog groups and researchers.

Henna Virkkunen (pictured), the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, didn’t mince words: “Transparency in online advertising — who pays and how audiences are targeted — is essential to safeguarding the public interest,” she said. “Citizens have a right to know who is behind the messages they see.”

In response, TikTok issued a carefully worded statement, acknowledging its ongoing efforts to improve ad transparency while pushing back on the Commission’s interpretation of the rules. “We support the goals of the regulation and continue to improve our ad transparency tools, but disagree with some of the Commission’s interpretations,” the company said.

TikTok now has an opportunity to respond before the Commission delivers a final decision. If the platform is found to be in breach of the DSA, it could face fines of up to 6% of its annual global turnover — a potentially massive penalty for one of the world’s fastest-growing social media platforms.