TikTok suspends contested rewards scheme amid EU legal probe

Chinese-owned video sharing platform TikTok announced on Wednesday that it is voluntarily suspending the rewards scheme for its new TikTok Lite app, amid a legal investigation by the European Commission.

The commission said on Monday that it could order TikTok to suspend the rewards feature unless the company demonstrated - within 48 hours - that it poses no risk of serious harm. The commission also said the company had to show it had complied with risk assessment and mitigation rules for large platforms under the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA).

On Wednesday, TikTok posted on X: "TikTok always seeks to engage constructively with the EU Commission and other regulators. We are therefore voluntarily suspending the rewards functions in TikTok Lite while we address the concerns that they have raised."

The probe concerns the way TikTok Lite lets users collect points by watching videos and exchange them for things of value, such as Amazon vouchers. The commission said on Monday that it is concerned the scheme "has been launched without prior diligent assessment of the risks it entails, in particular those related to the addictive effect."

TikTok Lite, which is similar to the wildly popular TikTok app but uses less memory and bandwidth, had its European launch in Spain and France this month.