BRUSSELS — European lawmakers from three left-leaning parties said Wednesday the EU should investigate TikTok over allegations of censorship in favor of the right. One of TikTok’s new owners as of late January is a Donald Trump ally, Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Users say that since the change in ownership, the platform has censored hot-button issues in favor of the president and his political camp, according to reports — including limiting posts about the Epstein files and protests against U.S. border agents in Minnesota. TikTok said some users have experienced disruption due to technical issues. On Wednesday the group of 32 lawmakers asked the European Commission, in charge of enforcing the EU’s platform rules on TikTok to open another investigation into the platform to verify if it is “causing a systemic risk” to freedom of expression and civic discourse. “Users have reported issues with uploading videos, reduced reach, and unusually low view counts, for content that mention the words Epstein, ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Minnesota” and some of the signatories “can personally attest that the same episodes — glitches and frozen videos” also happened in Berlin and Brussels, the MEPs said. A TikTok spokesperson said there are no platform rules against “sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages,” and that an issue experienced by some users was a technical problem “with one of our safety systems incorrectly responding in some instances.” TikTok is already under investigation for breaching its obligations around systemic risks under the Digital Services Act. The 32 signatories are primarily MEPs from the Greens, but also from The Left and the Socialists & Democrats. The platform struck a deal in late January with a group of investors including Oracle and Abu Dhabi’s MGX, ending a yearslong saga over the ownership of its United States operations.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Tuesday his government will ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media. “Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems — not just check boxes, but real barriers that work,” Sánchez said during an address to the plenary session of the World Government Summit in Dubai. “Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone … We will protect [minors] from the digital Wild West.” The proposed ban, which is set to be approved by the country’s Council of Ministers next week, will amend a draft bill currently being debated in the Spanish parliament. Whereas the current version of the legislation seeks to restrict access to social media to users aged 16 and older, the new amendment would expressly prohibit minors from registering on platforms. Spain joins a growing chorus of European countries hardening their approach to restricting kids online. Denmark announced plans for a ban on under-15’s last fall, and the French government is pushing to have a similar ban in place as soon as September. In Portugal, the governing center-right Social Democratic Party on Monday submitted draft legislation that would require under-16’s to obtain parental consent to access social media. Spain’s ban is included in a wider package of measures that Sánchez argued are necessary to “regain control” of the digital space. “Governments must stop turning a blind eye to the toxic content being shared,” he said. That includes a legislative proposal to hold social media executives legally accountable for the illegal content shared on their platforms, with a new tool to track the spread of disinformation, hate speech or child pornography on social networks. It also proposes criminalizing the manipulation of algorithms and amplification of illegal content. “We will investigate platforms whose algorithms amplify disinformation in exchange for profit,” Sánchez said, adding that “spreading hate must come at a cost — a legal cost, as well as an economic and ethical cost — that platforms can no longer afford to ignore.” The EU’s Digital Services Act requires platforms to mitigate risks from online content. The European Commission works “hand in hand” with EU countries on protections for kids online and the enforcement of these measures “towards the very large platforms is the responsibility of the Commission,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said Tuesday when asked about Sánchez’s announcement. The EU executive in December imposed a €120 million fine on Elon Musk’s X for failing to comply with transparency obligations, and a probe into the platform’s efforts to counter the spread of illegal content and disinformation is ongoing.

A group of researchers is suing Elon Musk’s X to gain access to data on Hungary’s upcoming elections to assess the risk of interference, they told POLITICO. Hungary is set to hold a highly contentious election in April as populist nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faces the toughest challenge yet to his 16-year grip on power. The lawsuit by Democracy Reporting International (DRI) comes after the civil society group, in November, applied for access to X data to study risks to the Hungarian election, including from disinformation. After X rejected their request, the researchers took the case to the Berlin Regional Court, which said it is not competent to rule on the case. DRI — with the support of the Society for Civil Rights and law firm Hausfeld — is now appealing to a higher Berlin court, which has set a hearing date of Feb. 17. Sites including X are obliged to grant researchers access to data under the European Union’s regulatory framework for social media platforms, the Digital Services Act, to allow external scrutiny of how platforms handle major online risks, including election interference. The European Commission fined X €40 million for failing to provide data access in December, as part of a €120 million levy for non-compliance with transparency obligations. The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge to X after the researchers went down a similar path last year to demand access to data related to the German elections in February 2025. A three-month legal drama, which saw a judge on the case dismissed after X successfully claimed they had a conflict of interest, ended with the court throwing out the case. The platform said that was a “comprehensive victory” because “X’s unwavering commitment to protecting user data and defending its fundamental right to due process has prevailed.” The researchers also claimed a win: The court threw the case out on the basis of a lack of urgency, as the elections were well in the past, said DRI. The groups say the ruling sets a legal precedent for civil society groups to take platforms to court where the researchers are located, rather than in the platforms’ legal jurisdictions (which, in X’s case, would be Ireland). X did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment on Monday.

BRUSSELS — The “presidential” way Ursula von der Leyen runs the European Commission is hurting Europe, according to a former member of her team. “I have the impression that commissioners are now largely silenced,” Nicolas Schmit, who was the commissioner for jobs and social rights in the first von der Leyen Commission, told POLITICO in an interview. “The system, how the College is organized — very centralized, call it presidential or whatever system — is not good for the College, it’s not good for the Commission, and it is not good for Europe in general,” he said. Schmit represented Luxembourg in the Commission from 2019 to 2024 and was the Party of European Socialists’ lead candidate in the 2024 EU election. The Socialists had hoped he could stay on for a second term, but Luxembourg’s government instead nominated Christophe Hansen, from von der Leyen’s own center-right European People’s Party. Schmit is now the president of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, the PES think tank. While it is unusual for sitting commissioners to openly criticize von der Leyen, several former members of the College have done so. Michel Barnier used his memoir to accuse his former boss of presiding over an “authoritarian drift” in the Commission. Another former commissioner, Thierry Breton, also said von der Leyen wielded too much power, arguing that Europe “was not built to have an empress or an emperor.” As a commissioner, Schmit belonged to a faction that challenged some of von der Leyen’s moves from within, including the appointment of a close ally as envoy for small businesses — a move that the European Parliament criticized for a lack of transparency. He also accused the Commission of lacking long-term vision and strategic planning. “Did we have a real strategic debate on Europe in the world, which was already a different world from the one we knew before? We did not have a real strategic approach, a real strategy,” he said of von der Leyen’s first term. A Commission spokesperson declined to comment. On U.S. relations, Schmit criticized the Commission for not publicly defending former commissioner Breton, who was handed a travel ban by Washington over what it views as unfair efforts to regulate American social media and tech giants. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told POLITICO at the time that the College of Commissioners agreed to provide Breton with legal and financial support. Breton was the commissioner who pushed through and helped enforce the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a piece of regulation designed to enforce content moderation policies on large online platforms. Schmit said the laws that the U.S. is unhappy about — regulating digital services and digital markets — were adopted by all 27 commissioners, including von der Leyen, and not by Breton alone. Thierry Breton was the commissioner who pushed through and helped enforce the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a piece of regulation designed to enforce content moderation policies on large online platforms. | Olivier Hoslet/EPA “This is the point where we should have shown more solidarity and said ‘no, it’s not one, it is all of us.’ But you know, courage is not always shared, including in political spheres,” he said. Schmit also took aim at the Commission’s deregulation push, which seeks to slash red tape in areas ranging from technology to environment policy through so-called omnibus packages. He said that although it can take too long to come up with laws, “in just one moment, you can issue this anti-legislation or try to draw back the whole thing.” He said this was “not a good way” to deal with the issue of reducing bureaucracy. Other figures on the center-left have echoed the criticism. Iratxe García — leader of the Socialists & Democrats group in the Parliament — has likened the deregulation drive to something straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. The European Ombudsman said in November that the Commission’s handling of the omnibus process had “procedural shortcomings” amounting to “maladministration,” citing the compressed timelines and the speed with which the reforms were drafted. The Commission has consistently justified the omnibus packages as simplification measures meant to boost competitiveness and cut administrative burdens on businesses. Nicholas Vinocur contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — France is hurtling toward a ban for children younger than 15 to access social media — a move that would see it become only the second country in the world to take that step. The plan comes amid rising concerns about the impacts of apps including Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X on children’s mental health. After Australia in December kicked kids under 16 off a host of platforms, France is leading the charge in Europe with a bill that would prohibit social media for under-15s as soon as this year. Supported by President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist Renaissance party, the proposed law passed the French parliament’s lower chamber in the early hours of Tuesday. Here are 5 things to know. WHEN WILL A BAN KICK IN? While the timing isn’t finalized, the government is targeting September of this year. “As of September 1st, our children and adolescents will finally be protected. I will see to it,” Macron said in an X post. The bill now has to be voted on by the French Senate, and Macron’s governing coalition is aiming for a discussion on Feb. 16. If the Senate votes the bill through, a joint committee with representatives of both upper and lower houses of parliament will be formed to finalize the text. WHICH PLATFORMS WILL BE BANNED? That decision will lie with France’s media authority Arcom, since the legislation itself doesn’t outline which platforms will or won’t be covered. The architect of the bill, Renaissance lawmaker Laure Miller, has said it will be similar to Australia’s and would likely see under-15s banned from using Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X. Australia no longer allows children under 16 to create accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube. Australia’s list doesn’t include Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, WhatsApp or YouTube Kids. Miller has also described plans to come up with a definition that could see the ban cover individual features on social media platforms. WhatsApp Stories and Channels — a feature of the popular messaging app — could be included, as well as the online chat within the gaming platform Roblox, the French MP said. WHO WILL ENFORCE IT? With France set to be the first country within the European Union to take this step, a major sticking point as the bill moves through parliament has been who will enforce it. Authorities have finally settled on an answer: Brussels. The EU has comprehensive social media rules, the Digital Services Act, which on paper prohibits countries from giving big platforms additional obligations. After some back and forth between France and the European Commission, they have come to an agreement. France can’t give more obligations to platforms but it can set a minimum age on accessing social media. It will then be up to the Commission to ensure national rules are followed. This is similar to how other parts of the DSA work, such as illegal content. Exactly what is illegal content is determined by national law, and the Commission must then make sure that platforms are properly assessing and mitigating the risks of spreading it. How exactly the EU will make sure no children in France are accessing sites is untested. DSA violations can lead to fines of up to 6 percent of platforms’ annual global revenue. WHAT ARE THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES? Companies within the industry have been at loggerheads over who should implement age gates that would render the social media ban possible. Platform providers including Meta say that operating system services should implement age checks, whereas OS and app store providers such as Apple say the opposite. The Commission has not clearly prescribed responsibility to either side of the industry, but France has interpreted guidance from Brussels as putting the onus on the service providers. France’s bill therefore puts the responsibility on the likes of TikTok and Instagram. Exactly what the technical solution will be to implement a ban is up to the platforms, as long as it meets requirements for accuracy and privacy. Some public entities have developed solutions, like the French postal service’s “Jeprouvemonage,” which the platforms can use. Privately developed tech is also available. “No solution will be imposed on the platforms by the state,” the office of the minister for digital affairs told journalists.  IS THIS HAPPENING IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES? France is not the only European country working on such restrictions. Denmark’s parliament agreed on restrictions for under-15s, although parents can allow them to go on social media if they are older than 13. Denmark hasn’t passed a formal bill. Austria’s digital minister said an Australia-style ban is being developed for under-14s. Bills are going through the Spanish and Italian parliaments, and Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has also voiced support for similar plans. Germany is considering its options. The Dutch government has issued guidance to say kids younger than 15 should not access social media like TikTok. Many of these countries as well as the European Parliament have said they want something done at the EU level. While the Commission has said it will allow EU countries to set their own minimum ages for accessing social media, it is also trying to come up with measures that would apply across the entire bloc. President Ursula von der Leyen has been personally paying attention to this issue and is setting up a panel of experts to figure out if an EU-wide ban is desirable and tenable.

BRUSSELS — Online marketplace Shein is rolling out an age-assurance tool to keep underage users away from inappropriate products, the company’s lawyer told lawmakers on Tuesday. The move follows outrage and regulatory pressure on the platform over the sale of sex dolls in November. The EU executive had demanded information from Shein on how it checks users’ age to make sure they cannot see inappropriate products. Shein has deployed a “third-party solution” on its website that is being rolled out on a “country-by-country” basis, General Counsel Zhu Yinan told the European Parliament’s internal market committee. “All age-restricted products” will be behind that layer of age checking, Zhu said. The Commission is the primary supervisor of Shein under the Digital Services Act, the EU law designed to limit the risks of online platforms to users. Shein is classified as a Very Large Online Platform with over 45 million users and can face fines up to 6 percent of its global annual revenue for breaches of the rules. The Commission did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment. Shein is also testing the Commission’s age verification app, or “mini wallet” as it’s sometimes called, Zhu said. This blueprint for an app to check age online was developed by the Commission and is currently being tested by six EU countries. “Of course it was totally unacceptable what has happened,” Zhu said, referring to the child-like sex dolls and other illegal content. But it “is not the first time that happened to a marketplace and it also happened to multiple marketplaces,” Zhu said.

BRUSSELS — Meta’s WhatsApp will face fresh scrutiny from Brussels after the EU decided the service falls under its tough regime for the biggest online platforms. A decision announced Monday to classify WhatsApp Channels as a popular online platform — joining the likes of Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok — means that the app will now be held liable for how it handles systemic risks to users. Platforms that fail to meet regulatory requirements can be fined up to 6 percent of global annual turnover under the EU’s Digital Services Act. The verdict also lands as countries such as France are actively discussing restrictions on social media platforms for children. The decision focuses particularly on WhatsApp Channels in which admins can broadcast announcements to groups of people in a feed, making it different from the messaging feature. WhatsApp’s private messaging service is explicitly excluded. WhatsApp was aware that the decision was coming as far back as August, when it reported that Channels had approximately 51.7 million users in the EU. That crossed the EU’s threshold for Very Large Online Platforms with over 45 million users in the EU. Meta now has four months to assess and mitigate systemic risks on its platform. Those risks include the spread of illegal content, as well as threats to civic discourse, elections, fundamental rights and health. “WhatsApp Channels continue to grow in Europe and globally. As this expansion continues, we remain committed to evolving our safety and integrity measures in the region, ensuring they align with relevant regulatory expectations and our ongoing responsibility to users,” WhatsApp spokesperson Joshua Breckman said in a statement.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission opened a fresh investigation Monday into Elon Musk’s X following an explosion of non-consensual sexualized deepfakes created by the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. The Commission will decide whether X met EU requirements to protect users when it integrated Grok into the social media platform and its underlying algorithm. X is already under investigation on several fronts under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which regulates social media platforms, and was in December fined €120 million for lapses in transparency. Penalties can reach up to 6 percent of X’s annual global revenue. The new investigation will look into whether the company properly assessed and mitigated the risks of integrating Grok, particularly those of “manipulated sexually explicit images” including some that “may amount to child sexual abuse material,” the Commission said. But the investigation “is much broader” than these images, a senior Commission official said during a briefing. The chatbot may have generated as many as 3 million non-consensual sexual images and 20,000 child sexual abuse images in the 11 days before it made changes to stop the spread of such photos, an estimate by civil society found. On top of the new investigation, the Commission will expand a 2023 probe to look into the impact of X’s decision, announced last week, to switch the algorithm for its social media platform to a Grok-based system. The Commission said Monday it could take interim steps — for example, order X to change its algorithms or shut down the chatbot — “in the absence of meaningful adjustments to the X service,” something the EU has so far shied away from doing for Musk’s platform. The threshold for such measures is “really high,” a second senior Commission official said. The image-generating feature of Grok went viral just before the end of 2025, as users instructed the chatbot to alter images of real people. This led to global outcry and calls from EU lawmakers to ban nudification AI apps as well as crack down on Grok. The platform did restrict the chatbot’s image generation abilities in January, initially by limiting them to paid subscribers of Grok. The Commission said at the time it was assessing whether changes made to Grok were sufficient. EU officials found initial changes insufficient and voiced their concerns to the platform, after which the platform took further steps. “I dare say that without our interaction, probably none of these kind of changes that they have done would have appeared,” the second official said. X did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

A study on the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok embedded on X estimates it created 3 million sexualized images in 11 days in January, including 23,000 of children. Meanwhile European regulators have yet to decide how to handle the explosion of nonconsensual deepfakes on the already embattled platform. The study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed a sample of 20,000 posts on Grok’s X handle, out of a total of 4.6 million in an 11 day period. It found that 65 percent of the sample was sexualized images and 0.5 percent were likely depicting children. The image-generating feature of Grok went viral just before the end of 2025, particularly due to its ability to undress people. The platform took some steps to restrict the feature on Jan. 9 and again on Jan. 14. The European Commission, in charge of implementing the Digital Services Act covering large platforms like X, as well as the EU’s AI law, is considering which tool to wield. A fresh probe into Grok under the powerful social media regulation is in the works. X has already been fined and is being investigated on several fronts by the Commission. The EU is also considering a ban on AI nudification apps, which may or may not apply to general-purpose tools like Grok. The Center for Countering Digital Hate didn’t analyze the prompts of the posts so can’t say whether any of the people depicted consented to being edited. Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the civil society group, was recently banned from traveling to the United States administration for its alleged role in censorship.

Top officials in the European Parliament have voted to condemn U.S. sanctions on former European Commissioner Thierry Breton. Washington last month slapped a visa ban on Breton, who was the EU’s tech czar during the previous term of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The prohibition owed to Breton’s role in pushing through the bloc’s flagship digital rulebook, which the Trump administration sees as regulatory overreach against American social media and tech giants. “The European Parliament firmly rejects the visa ban imposed by the US authorities on former Commissioner Breton, which is solely motivated due to his role in the development and implementation of the Digital Services Act,” the leaders of the parliament’s various political groups, who make up its Conference of Presidents, said in a joint statement. Calling the sanctions “an unacceptable personalisation of EU policy, a dangerous precedent for the independence of the European Institutions and an attack on the EU’s regulatory sovereignty,” the parliament’s top officials added: “The European Parliament and all other EU institutions should jointly ensure that similar attacks against current or former members of the EU institutions are met with a systematic and coordinated response.” The right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, the political home of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group did not support the statement. Breton and four other European nationals were targeted by the U.S. sanctions in late December. The penalties were the first Washington has levied at an EU policymaker and marked a new low in transatlantic relations. The statement added that the “Parliament welcomes the Commission’s decision to grant legal and financial assistance” to Breton. Breton welcomed the statement of support. “When bullied, the EU must stand firm — on principles & on action,” he wrote on social media. “I welcome the European Parliament’s rejection of the US visa ban targeting me. This is not about one individual. It is about our capacity to vote our own laws without any interference.” The French former commissioner told POLITICO in an interview that the sanctions had arisen from a “major misunderstanding” about the EU’s Digital Services Act, and insisted he respects U.S. freedom of speech traditions.  “People imagine that the DSA was conceived to have extra-territorial reach. That’s completely false,” he said. The Commission slapped tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s X with a €120 million fine last month under the DSA, while Apple and Meta were fined hundreds of millions of euros last year for breaking separate digital antitrust rules.