The European Commission today preliminarily found TikTok in breach of the Digital Services Act over the "rabbit hole effect" of its For You feed, concluding that the platform did not adequately assess how its recommendation algorithm can pull users into continuous streams of videos about sadness, isolation and body image, and that the measures it put in place to limit the effect do not work.

At this stage of the investigation, Brussels says TikTok needs to change the design of the feed. One of the examples in the Commission's announcement, published in Brussels under reference IP/26/2361, goes to the centre of how short-form video platforms decide what to show next: TikTok should "disable viewing time as an indicator to recommend content".

The findings are preliminary and do not prejudge the outcome. TikTok can now examine the Commission's investigation file and reply in writing, while the European Board for Digital Services is consulted in parallel. If the Commission confirms its views, a non-compliance decision could carry a fine of up to 6% of the provider's total worldwide annual turnover.

In Short

Europe's top regulator says TikTok's main video feed keeps showing people more of whatever they linger on, even when that is sad or harmful material about weight or self-image, and that TikTok has not done enough to stop it. This matters because the same feed decides which videos reach millions of people in Europe, including posts from creators and brands. TikTok can now answer the charges, and if the Commission sticks to its view it could force design changes, such as no longer using how long you watch a video to pick the next one, and fine the company up to 6% of its yearly worldwide turnover.

What the Commission found

The Commission's case rests on a simple description of a feedback loop. According to the announcement, "the more a user interacts with a certain type of content, the more TikTok's 'For You' feed algorithm recommends similar content." The For You feed shows users "a continuous stream of personalised videos, even when those are related to mental health struggles and body image," according to the Commission.

That design, the Commission argues, can be harmful when "endless and repeated exposure involves, for example, content about sadness, isolation or body image." The announcement says such rabbit holes can have a detrimental impact on users' mental health, "especially that of vulnerable adults and minors." The wording matters. Today's case is not confined to children, unlike much of the legislation and litigation aimed at social media feeds over the past two years.

Today's findings cover two separate obligations that the DSA places on a very large online platform, or VLOP: the duty to assess risks, set out in Article 34, and the duty to mitigate them, set out in Article 35.

A risk assessment that missed the mechanism

On the first count, the Commission preliminarily found that TikTok "did not adequately assess how its recommendation algorithm may lead users into such 'rabbit holes', putting their wellbeing at risk." According to the Commission, its findings show that the algorithm design "may play an important role in the emergence of 'rabbit holes'."

The mechanism the Commission describes is engagement-based personalisation. The algorithm uses information about user engagement, such as watching and liking videos, to personalise what it recommends. The Commission gave a concrete example: "when a user repeatedly watches or likes content that may be triggering, such as content about weight-loss or body image, the system interprets these interactions as positive signs of interest and recommends more of the same."

In other words, the recommender system cannot tell the difference between a user who is interested and a user who is stuck. Both look the same in the data. Repeated exposure, according to the Commission, may lead to "increased feelings of sadness or anxiety, body dissatisfaction, lower self-esteem, or worsening of existing eating disorders and mental conditions."

That list is the Commission's description of the systemic risk at stake. Under the DSA, a systemic risk is one that arises from the design or functioning of a very large platform and its related systems, and the obligation to assess it falls on the platform before regulators ever arrive.

Mitigations that did not work

The second count concerns what TikTok did about the risk. The Commission preliminarily concluded that TikTok "failed to implement proportionate, reasonable and effective mitigation measures to address these risks."

TikTok had not done nothing. The announcement acknowledges that the company "has already put in place certain measures to mitigate the risk of the 'rabbit hole effect'." The problem, in the Commission's preliminary view, is that those measures "are not effective." Three findings stand out.

First, measures designed to recommend more varied content "do not sufficiently reduce how often similar content is recommended, including content related to mental health struggles and body image." Second, the control tools "do not effectively enable users to control the content recommended to them." The Commission singled out the "not interested" button, saying that using it "may not be enough to change the content feed."

Third, and most consequential, is the Commission's description of what the algorithm actually prioritises. According to the announcement, "the algorithm prioritises showing users content based on viewing time, over their choice to see less of certain content." Put plainly, when a user's stated wish and a user's viewing behaviour point in different directions, the Commission found that behaviour wins.

What Brussels wants changed

The Commission did not stop at diagnosis. "At this stage of the investigation, the Commission considers that TikTok needs to change the design of the 'For You' feed," the announcement says. It then listed four examples of what that could mean. TikTok should:

  • rely more on users' explicit preferences;
  • disable viewing time as an indicator to recommend content;
  • increase the accessibility and usability of user controls;
  • regularly test its algorithm.

The distinction between explicit and implicit signals runs through all four. Explicit preferences are things a user says: a follow, a topic selection, a tap on "not interested". Implicit signals are things a user does, such as how long a video stays on screen before the next swipe. Engagement-ranked feeds lean heavily on the second category because it is abundant, it arrives with every video, and it does not require the user to stop and decide anything.

What would a For You feed look like without viewing time? The announcement does not say. It sets no technical standard, gives no deadline, does not specify how often "regularly" testing should happen, and does not say whether the changes would apply to every user or to particular groups. Those details would normally be settled in a final decision or in commitments offered by the company. The examples are also framed as examples: the Commission writes "for example" before listing them.

Other platforms have experimented with explicit controls. Meta in February let Threads users type "Dear Algo" in a public post to adjust their feed for 72 hours, although Meta did not disclose how those requests are weighted against other signals. That question - how much weight a stated preference receives against observed behaviour - is exactly where the Commission's TikTok finding lands.

Why viewing time matters beyond the feed

For the marketing community, the significance of today's announcement lies less in the rabbit-hole label than in the signal the Commission has named. Viewing time is one of the most basic inputs in short-form video ranking. If the Commission's preliminary view survives, the measure that has determined how far a video travels on TikTok in Europe could be removed as a recommendation input, at least in the form TikTok uses it today.

That has consequences for anyone whose content depends on the For You feed for distribution. Creators, brand accounts and publishers on TikTok reach audiences largely through algorithmic recommendation rather than through follower lists. The Commission's own description is that the algorithm prioritises content based on viewing time. A ranking system that gives more weight to stated preferences and less to watch behaviour would, by PPC Land's reading, change which organic videos travel and how far. The announcement says nothing about creators, brands or reach, so the scale of any such change cannot be estimated from the document.

Advertising is a separate question that the Commission did not address. Today's findings concern the recommendation of content in the For You feed, not ad delivery or targeting. The distinction is not always clean in practice, however. TikTok's own ad products lean on attention signals of a similar kind. When TikTok introduced Brand Consideration Ads in May, the objective tracked a 6-second view-through rate, which TikTok described as a proxy for attention quality, and repeated viewing of branded content was among the signals used to identify users with brand interest. Nothing in today's announcement touches those products. But the reasoning the Commission applied to organic content - that repeated watching is not the same as wanting more - is not specific to any one type of content.

There is a deeper commercial question too. In an interview in August, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu argued that removing algorithmic feeds would stop TikTok's model working, while Facebook could still function in a friends-and-trusted-sources form. The Commission is not asking TikTok to remove its algorithmic feed. It is asking TikTok to change what the feed optimises for. Whether a feed can be personalised and still keep users watching at current levels once its most direct measure of attention is taken out is a question the Commission's announcement leaves open.

Fourth set of findings in one proceeding

Today's announcement is part of formal proceedings that have now produced findings on four separate strands, plus one strand closed through commitments.

The Commission launched formal proceedings against TikTok on February 19, 2024, and the rabbit-hole effect of TikTok's recommender systems was part of the scope from the start, alongside age misrepresentation and the privacy and safety of minors. By PPC Land's count, 991 days separate the opening of the proceedings from today's findings on that strand.

The other strands have moved at different speeds. On October 24, 2025, the Commission issued preliminary findings that TikTok and Meta had breached transparency obligations by failing to give researchers adequate access to public data. In December 2025, the advertising transparency strand, which concerned TikTok's ad repository, was closed through binding commitments, according to today's announcement.

On February 6, 2026, the Commission preliminarily found that TikTok's addictive design breached the DSA, citing infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and its highly personalised recommender system. Brussels then suggested that TikTok disable infinite scroll over time, add screen-time breaks including at night, and adapt its recommender system. TikTok rejected those findings at the time as false and without merit. In July 2026, the Commission adopted a further set of preliminary findings related to the protection of minors.

The February and November findings both involve the recommender system, but they target different harms. February was about compulsive use: features that keep people scrolling for longer than they intend. Today's case is about content concentration: what the algorithm keeps showing, regardless of how long a session lasts. A user could hit a screen-time limit and still spend every minute of that session inside a rabbit hole.

Today's announcement describes the February and July findings only as preliminary findings and does not mention any non-compliance decision against TikTok. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to the Associated Press.

How the evidence was built

According to the Commission, its preliminary views rest on an in-depth investigation that included analysis of TikTok's risk assessment reports, internal data and documents, and the company's responses to multiple requests for information. The Commission also reviewed what it called "the extensive scientific research on this topic" and interviewed experts in multiple fields, including recommender systems, psychology and psychiatry.

Ireland's Digital Services Coordinator, Coimisiún na Meán, supported the Commission in the investigation. TikTok's European operations are established in Ireland, which gives the Irish regulator a standing role in DSA matters involving the company, though enforcement against very large platforms on systemic risk sits with the Commission.

What the announcement does not contain is any figure. It does not say how often similar content recurs in a typical feed, how many users the Commission believes are affected, what share of recommendations the diversification measures change, or how much weight viewing time carries relative to other signals. Those numbers may be in the investigation file that TikTok can now examine. None were made public today.

The same theory, applied to Meta

TikTok is not the only platform facing this line of argument in Brussels. On July 10, 2026, the Commission preliminarily found that Meta's Instagram and Facebook breached the DSA over addictive design, saying Meta had not adequately considered the effects of highly personalised recommendations, autoplay and infinite scroll. The remedies the Commission expected there included disabling autoplay and infinite scroll by default and reworking the recommender to optimise for more than engagement. Meta's proceedings, opened on May 16, 2024, also contain a separate strand on rabbit-hole effects in recommendations to minors, which remains open.

The Meta finding came in the same week that regulators and litigants on both sides of the Atlantic moved against engagement-driven feeds, including a suit filed by the city of Boston against Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube on July 8, 2026.

Henna Virkkunen, the Commission's Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, put the principle in general terms. "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," she said. "The Digital Services Act makes platforms responsible for addressing the negative effects related to their recommender system. Today's preliminary findings show again that TikTok needs to step up its efforts to protect users' well-being, including those of minors."

The phrase "show again" is pointed. It frames today's findings as a pattern rather than a single lapse.

From time limits to ranking signals

The remedies on the table in the United States have mostly taken a different form. In Alabama, a state court on September 25, 2026 approved a consent decree under which TikTok must block teen users after 120 minutes a day by default, with $116.2 million guaranteed. A month earlier, on August 26, a federal judge entered a consent judgment under which Meta must cap teens at two hours a day across Facebook and Instagram by default.

California has gone after the feed itself, but only for minors. On August 5, 2026, Judge Edward J. Davila denied preliminary injunctions sought by Meta, TikTok and Google, finding that ranking by predicted engagement is not an expressive judgment, which allowed the state to enforce parts of SB 976, including a default one-hour daily limit on addictive feeds for minors. On September 10, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1709, which bars covered platforms from providing addictive features to users under 16 and sets penalties of up to $50,000 per affected minor for knowing violations. Meta and Google each filed federal suits against AB 1709 on November 4, 2026, two days before today's announcement, according to court filings.

The EU's own legislative track points in the same direction. The Commission's proposed EU KIDS Act, adopted on September 17, 2026, would require recommender systems to disable implicit engagement-based signals for minors by default under its Article 10. That proposal is not law.

Today's finding is different from all of these in two respects. It targets a specific ranking signal rather than a time limit, and it is framed around users in general, with vulnerable adults and minors named as especially exposed. If confirmed, it would apply to TikTok under a regulation already in force, not a bill or a proposal.

What happens next

The procedure from here is set by the DSA. TikTok may examine the documents in the Commission's investigation files and reply in writing to the preliminary findings. The European Board for Digital Services, which brings together national Digital Services Coordinators, will be consulted at the same time. The announcement gives no date for TikTok's reply or for any decision.

If the Commission's views are ultimately confirmed, it may issue a non-compliance decision, which can trigger a fine "proportionate to the nature, gravity, recurrence and duration of the infringement" and of up to 6% of the provider's total worldwide annual turnover. Recurrence is one of the listed factors, and three other strands of the same proceedings have already produced preliminary findings against TikTok.

The Commission has converted DSA findings into fines twice so far, as reported by PPC Land. On December 5, 2025, it fined X €120 million over its blue checkmark, its advertising repository and researcher data access - the first non-compliance decision under the regulation. On May 28, 2026, it fined Temu €200 million under Articles 34 and 35, the same two articles at issue in today's TikTok findings.

The Temu case offers a template for what might follow a decision. There, the fine came with an obligation to submit an action plan setting out how the company would fix its risk assessment and mitigation. A similar order for TikTok would be the likely place where the details missing from today's announcement - how much weight viewing time may carry, what testing means, how controls must work - would be decided.

For now, the Commission has put its theory of the case on record: that an algorithm treating every second of watching as a vote for more of the same is a design choice, and one that a very large platform is obliged to assess and correct.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The European Commission, with support from Ireland's Digital Services Coordinator Coimisiún na Meán, against TikTok. Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen issued the Commission's statement. TikTok users in the EU, particularly vulnerable adults and minors, are the people the Commission says are at risk; creators, brands and publishers who rely on the For You feed for distribution are affected by any change to how it ranks content.

What: Preliminary findings that TikTok breached the Digital Services Act by failing to adequately assess the "rabbit hole effect" of its For You recommendation algorithm and by failing to put in place effective measures to reduce it. The Commission found that diversification measures and the "not interested" button do not work well enough and that the algorithm prioritises viewing time over users' choice to see less of certain content. It said TikTok should rely more on explicit preferences, disable viewing time as a recommendation indicator, improve user controls and regularly test its algorithm.

When: Today, November 6, 2026. The findings are part of formal proceedings opened on February 19, 2024, which have also produced preliminary findings in October 2025, February 2026 and July 2026, and commitments on advertising transparency in December 2025.

Where: Brussels, under EU law, applying to TikTok's service across the European Union.

Why: The DSA requires very large online platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks arising from the design of their services, including their recommender systems. The Commission's preliminary view is that repeated exposure to content about sadness, isolation, weight loss and body image can harm mental health, and that TikTok's engagement-based design drives that exposure. If confirmed, a non-compliance decision could bring a fine of up to 6% of the provider's total worldwide annual turnover and require changes to how the For You feed works.