The Prosecutor of the Computer Crime Chamber of the State Attorney General's Office, Elvira Tejada de la Fuente, has filed a complaint this Friday against the entity TikTok Technologies Spain SL before the Plaza de Guardia of the Court of Instance of Madrid to investigate possible crimes related to the dissemination of child sexual abuse material that could have been perpetrated on the platform.
This has been announced by the Public Prosecutor's Office, which has detailed that, in its letter, the Court Prosecutor requests the judicial authority to initiate the appropriate judicial procedure, the declaration of secrecy of the proceedings and the practice of the corresponding investigative procedures to determine the facts and those possibly responsible. In addition, the Computer Crime Chamber Prosecutor requests "urgently and immediately" the removal of the reported abuse content.
On November 11, the State Attorney General, Teresa Peramato Martín, decided to appoint the Computer Crime Chamber Prosecutor to investigate the possible crimes reported by the media Maldita.es. The complaint stated that the complaining entity had been aware of activities related to the publication, dissemination and sale of child abuse material on the TikTok platform.
It was also indicated that the social network recommends content of the same nature that can be accessed on that platform or others, in addition to live broadcasts with minors in exchange for financial compensation.
The complainants appeared before the Prosecutor of the Coordinating Chamber against Computer Crime in order to ratify their complaint and present the evidentiary material to the Prosecutor's Office. The Chamber Prosecutor, after the appropriate procedures and verifications, presented the complaint to the judicial authority this Friday.
Last Monday, Maldita.es published an investigation in which it claims to have identified more than a thousand TikTok videos with explicit child sexual abuse material. Of them, a sample of 50 have been reported to the platform as illegal content, which accumulated 8.8 million views and more than 148,000 likes.
According to the organization, TikTok has only deleted five of these videos (10%) and has blocked another 13 (26%) only in Spain. In 6% of the cases it has not responded and in the remaining 58% it has considered that they do not violate the law or its rules, although more than half of the latter were removed within 72 hours after the complaints. After that period, 38% of the reported accounts were still active.
TikTok, for its part, assured that maintaining its platform as a safe environment for users represents its "top priority" and accused Maldita.es of refusing to fully share its findings on alleged cases of child sexual abuse on the platform, which prevents them from removing this content.
The Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego, asked the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) on Tuesday to paralyze TikTok's activity in Spain on an exceptional basis, under article 66 of the General Data Protection Regulation, following Maldita.es' investigation into child sexual abuse material on the platform.
