If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The European Commission has told TikTok it broke the European Union’s Digital Services Act by failing to protect the accounts of minors. The Commission’s preliminary findings, issued on July 24, say TikTok lets minors set their accounts to public, so anyone, including people without a TikTok account, can see their content. The default also lets the platform recommend posts from users aged 16 and 17 to any other user through the For You feed. The Commission said the settings expose children to cyberbullying, unwanted contact, and predatory behavior. It said TikTok should make minors’ accounts visible by default only to users the minor has accepted, and should never push an older minor’s content to a global audience. TikTok can respond before the Commission issues a final decision. A non-compliance ruling carries a fine of up to 6 percent of the company’s annual worldwide revenue. The finding rests on a line between a minor’s account and an adult’s. To apply one rule to minors and another to adults, a platform has to know which of its users are minors. The same Commission has already said how it wants that done. On July 14, 2025, it published guidelines on protecting minors under its censorship law, the Digital Services Act. The guidelines rank the ways a platform can check a user’s age. Self-declaration, entering a birth date, is “unreliable.” Age estimation uses “facial analysis or behaviour patterns.” Age verification checks “official IDs or trusted digital credentials, such as the upcoming EU Digital Identity Wallet.” On the same day, the Commission released an app for age ID checks that it called a “gold standard in age assurance.” It is being piloted across member states, and the Digital Identity Wallet is due in 2026. All three methods collect data TikTok does not hold now. To sort minors from adults, age estimation reads the face or the behavior of every TikTok user. Age verification runs every user’s ID or EU wallet credential through the check. The adults who were never the subject of the Commission’s finding get scanned or checked alongside the children. A platform that has to confirm each user’s age cannot keep offering anonymous accounts. To use TikTok as an adult, a user first has to prove to TikTok that they are one. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post EU DSA Ruling on TikTok Points to ID Checks appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.