Ireland’s Coimisiun na Mean’s to investigate TikTok, LinkedIn

Ireland’s Coimisiun na Mean’s Investigations Team has commenced two formal investigations into the TikTok and LinkedIn (MSFT) platforms, under the EU Digital Services Act. The investigations will assess whether these platforms have contravened Articles 16(1), 16(2)(c) and Article 25 of the DSA. As part of the review, concerns arose in relation to potential ‘dark patterns’, or deceptive interface designs, of the illegal content reporting mechanisms, specifically that the reporting mechanisms were liable to confuse or deceive people into believing that they were reporting content as illegal content, as opposed to content in violation of the provider’s Terms and Conditions. If this is correct, this might mean that the illegal content reporting mechanisms are not effective in preventing the dissemination of illegal content and the rights of people under the DSA might be undermined. Other publicly traded companies in the social media space include Meta Platforms (META), Pinterest (PINS), Reddit (RDDT) and Snap (SNAP).