Spain: investigation opened for alleged distribution of pedophile content on TikTok

The Spanish prosecutor's office on Wednesday ordered the opening of an investigation into the alleged dissemination of pedophile content on the social network TikTok, after the filing of a complaint by the Maldita.es association. A magistrate has been appointed to “investigate possible offenses linked to the production and dissemination of content of sexual abuse of minors and corruption of minors which could have been committed on the social network TikTok”, specified the prosecution in a press release.

On Monday, Maldita.es published an investigation explaining that during its investigations, the association had found on this social network more than 1,000 explicit videos of sexual assaults against children, which totaled 48 million accumulated views. Asked by AFP on Monday, the Chinese network did not react.

According to Maldita.es, which had already investigated the subject twice, TikTok only removed 10% of the content it reported and blocked only 26% of illegal content in Spain. Investigators also discovered more than 26,000 profiles of potential child molesters trading or selling sexual assault material on TikTok, 7,700 of which operated in Spanish. While the rules of this social network do not authorize minors to carry out live broadcasts, the investigation identified nearly a hundred of these broadcasts in 17 countries, where spectators asked children to do certain things, sometimes of a sexual nature, for remuneration. According to Maldita.es, the search engine of this social network, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, has not blocked keywords linked to this content - unlike other platforms.

The European Union has launched a vast offensive to regulate social networks within the framework of the application of the DSA (Digital Services Act) and intends to prohibit access to those under 13 years of age, due to the numerous risks to their well-being and development. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced at the beginning of February a series of measures aimed at combating “the manipulation and amplification of illegal content” on social networks, in particular by wanting to prohibit access to these platforms for those under 16 years of age. The socialist leader regularly accuses X, Meta and TikTok of not fighting sufficiently against the creation and dissemination of false sexual images of minors on their platforms.