If you keep watching one kind of sad video on TikTok, the app keeps sending you more. Brussels now says that loop may be illegal: the European Commission has preliminarily found that TikTok’s For You feed breaches the Digital Services Act.
The Commission calls it the “rabbit hole” effect. The feed learns from what a person watches and likes, then narrows toward similar clips, including ones about sadness, isolation and body image. Regulators argue that a steady diet of this material can wear down mental health, and that teenagers and other vulnerable adults are the most exposed.
The practical stakes are the people who scroll for hours. A user who pauses on one video about feeling low can find more and more of the feed tilting that way as the algorithm keeps learning from them. That design choice, not any single video, is what the Commission is questioning.
Two charges are bundled in the finding. One is that TikTok did not properly assess the risk its recommender system creates. The other is that it did not do enough to limit the harm once the risk was clear.
Nothing is final yet. TikTok gets to see the evidence and answer it before the Commission decides, and the case sits inside a formal investigation opened on 19 February 2024. Earlier in 2026 the Commission already issued preliminary findings on the app’s addictive design and its accounts for minors.
The Commission announced the step in a press release on 6 November. A confirmed breach can lead to a fine and an order to change how the feed works. The release is about users in the EU and does not say whether any change would reach other countries.
