EU Orders TikTok to Overhaul Personalised Feeds Over Mental Health Risks

The European Union has formally ordered TikTok to make sweeping changes to the way it delivers personalised video content to users, warning that its recommendation algorithm pushes people into dangerous cycles of harmful material that damage mental health and wellbeing.

The directive, issued on Friday, targets the core mechanics of how TikTok surfaces content to individual users. Regulators say the platform's algorithm can trap users, particularly young people, in so-called content spirals, where watching one video on a sensitive topic leads to an escalating feed of increasingly extreme or distressing material.

TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, a Chinese technology group, and is one of the most-used social media platforms in the world, including across Africa and in Mauritius, where it has become a major channel for news, entertainment and local content creators.

The EU's demand comes under the Digital Services Act, or DSA, a landmark piece of European legislation that came into full force in 2024. The DSA imposes strict obligations on very large online platforms, requiring them to assess and reduce systemic risks, including those related to mental health, the spread of illegal content and threats to democratic processes. Platforms that fail to comply can face fines of up to six percent of their global annual turnover.

Under the DSA, TikTok is classified as a very large online platform because it has more than 45 million monthly active users in the European Union alone. This classification means it faces the highest level of regulatory scrutiny.

European regulators have already launched separate DSA-related investigations into TikTok in recent months, examining issues ranging from child protection to the platform's transparency around advertising and political content. This latest demand specifically targets the personalised feed system, which critics argue is deliberately engineered to maximise time spent on the app at the expense of user wellbeing.

TikTok has previously said it offers users tools to manage their experience, including screen time limits and the ability to filter certain types of content. However, the EU has indicated these measures do not go far enough.

What this means: For Mauritian users and content creators on TikTok, this ruling does not directly change how the app works here, as EU regulations apply within European borders. However, decisions made by major platforms in response to EU pressure often lead to global product changes, since redesigning a core system for one market tends to roll out more broadly. If TikTok is forced to fundamentally rethink its recommendation engine in Europe, users worldwide, including in Mauritius, could eventually see a less aggressive and more balanced content feed.

Source: Le Defi Media