TikTok, Meta attack at European Union's content moderation laws in court

By Stephanie Bodoni

TikTok and Meta Platforms Inc. are attacking European Union regulators in court for slapping them with larger fees than rivals to enforce the bloc’s new content moderation rules.  
 

ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok took the European Commission to court on Feb. 6 and Meta filed its challenge a day earlier, filings show. Both companies are attacking the EU’s method of calculating these charges, saying they’ll end up paying a much larger share than other tech giants who might even have a bigger user base.

“We disagree with the fee and are appealing on a number of grounds, including the use of flawed third party estimates of our monthly active user numbers as a basis for calculating the total amount,” TikTok said in a statement Thursday, after its appeal appeared on the EU General Court’s website.

The EU’s landmark Digital Services Act forces social media companies to hire more content moderators and use risk mitigation methods to decrease the spread of harmful content, while online marketplaces have to trace sellers and allow customers to flag illegal products. Companies that fail to comply could face fines as high as 6% of annual revenue, or even be banned from the bloc if they repeatedly break the rules.

Under EU rules, companies that have been designated as very large online platforms — those with more than 45 million monthly active users in Europe — are required to divvy up costs needed to enforce the new rules based on the number of users they have.

“Our decision and methodology are solid,” the EU watchdog said in a statement on the appeals. “We will defend our position in court.”

It added that all tech firms concerned had already paid the fees due by December.

Meta said while it supports the objectives of the new rules and has already made changes to comply with them, it disagrees “with the methodology used to calculate these fees.”

“Currently, companies that record a loss don’t have to pay, even if they have a large user base or represent a greater regulatory burden,” it said in a statement. This means “some companies pay nothing, leaving others to pay a disproportionate amount of the total,” Meta added.