TikTok loses lawsuit over EU Digital Markets Act obligations

The DMA, announced in September 2023, forces six tech giants including Google (owned by Alphabet), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance - the Chinese company that owns the popular video-sharing platform TikTok, to change the way they operate in order to create a fairer market.

TikTok filed a lawsuit against its inclusion in the DMA list last November, asking for a temporary suspension of TikTok’s compliance with the DMA. ByteDance argued that compliance with the DMA would risk exposing key strategic information about TikTok’s user-profiling practices that are not in the public domain.

However, the Court of First Instance stated: "ByteDance has failed to demonstrate the urgent need for an interim injunction to avoid serious and irreparable harm."

A TikTok spokesperson said the company was disappointed with the court’s decision but looked forward to a speedy resolution of the case. The spokesperson added that TikTok has been preparing to comply with the DMA and will continue to meet its obligations.

TikTok is not the only company pushing for legal action against the EU over the issue. Meta has announced it will take legal action against the EU over the fees the world’s biggest tech companies are charged under content moderation laws.

The DMA is one of the toughest laws in the world aimed at the markets of the world's leading technology companies, and is also aimed at making it easier for people to switch between competing services, such as between social networks, internet browsers and app stores. The EU regulator identified 22 services from major technology companies, including Facebook, Instagram and some Alphabet products such as YouTube, that must interact with rival services and allow users to decide which apps can be pre-installed on their devices, thereby ensuring advertising transparency, the end of app stores' monopoly, no more default apps...