Spain’s government has called for TikTok’s operations in the country to be suspended until the platform removes child sexual abuse material. The announcement was made on Tuesday, after a media report documented 1,183 explicit posts on the platform with millions of views.
Youth Minister Sira Rego, whose ministry cannot ban the platform in Spain on its own, has urged prosecutors and the Data Protection Agency to take action against the social media company. “Social media cannot be a territory without law,” Rego said. The demand comes several months after Pedro Sanchez’s government requested an investigation into X, Meta and TikTok over the alleged distribution of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, as European regulators step up scrutiny of major technology companies over harmful and illegal content.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The Spanish non-profit organization Maldita.es published an investigation on Monday that found child sexual abuse videos had been viewed on the platform at least 48 million times, with more than 26,000 profiles commenting on and sharing the material. A follow-up story published Tuesday evening by Maldita.es noted that TikTok had restricted two of the search terms identified as pathways to child sexual abuse content for users in Spain, but searches from other European countries still led to the same content.
Source: NBC News