Machine Learning Engineer Intern

EU regulators say TikTok is leaving children exposed by design. July 29, 2026 Any stranger on the internet, including people without a TikTok account, can view what a child posts on the platform. That's not a bug or an edge case. It's how TikTok works by default, and European regulators have finally had enough. The European Commission has issued preliminary findings that TikTok's account settings for minors fail to meet the safety standards required under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The core problem is straightforward: minors can set their accounts to public, and once they do, their content becomes visible to literally anyone, on or off the platform. For users aged 16 to 17, that content can also be pushed to any other TikTok user through the For You Feed, meaning a teenager's videos can reach an audience they never chose and can't meaningfully control. But it gets worse. Even when a minor chooses a private account, they're not fully protected. Their profile photo remains visible to anyone, and their account can be easily found by browsing the follower and following lists of other users. So the private setting is, in practice, more of a suggestion than a shield. The Commission's concern isn't abstract. Investigators spoke with law enforcement officers and experts in child protection, child abuse, and neuropsychology. The risks they identified include unwanted contact from predators, cyberbullying, and the fact that content posted during adolescence can follow someone permanently into adulthood. These aren't theoretical harms. Under the DSA, platforms that are accessible to minors must provide a high level of privacy, safety, and security by default, not as an optional setting that a child has to seek out and activate. The Commission's position is that TikTok should change the default so that a minor's content is visible only to users they've explicitly accepted. Older minors might be allowed to choose a broader audience, but that audience should never extend outside the platform to the general public. The For You Feed recommendation of minors' content should stop entirely. This matters beyond TikTok. The DSA was designed precisely to force platforms to treat child safety as a structural obligation rather than a reputational talking point. These findings are part of a broader investigation into TikTok launched in February 2024 that has already produced preliminary findings on addictive design features and separately addressed advertising transparency. The pattern emerging from that investigation is one of a platform that consistently chose engagement over protection. TikTok now has the right to review the Commission's investigation files and respond in writing. If the findings are confirmed, the company could face a fine of up to 6% of its global annual turnover. That's a number large enough to mean something, though whether it's large enough to actually change how a platform this size builds its products is a different question entirely. The Commission's next step, a formal non-compliance decision, would answer it.

TikTok tests prime-style shopping membership service. TikTok is reportedly testing a membership program for U.S. shoppers, similar to Amazon Prime. That's according to a report Friday (July 24) from Business Insider, citing screenshots of the offering seen by its journalists. According to the report, the program is called TikTok Shop Plus, built into the social media company's eCommerce platform. It offers perks such as free shipping, discounts and coupons for members, similar to Amazon Prime, Business Insider added. The report gives an example of the program in action: a hair product that usually sells for $57 was marked down by $10 for Plus members, who also received free three-day shipping. TikTok is testing the program at a range of price points: $6, $10 or $15 a month, the screenshots seen by Business Insider showed. A former TikTok Shop employee told Business Insider that the launch of a membership program could help the company keep users from leaving the app to make purchases. "TikTok, for a long time, watched a lot of their bottom-funnel buyers go over to Amazon," they said. "I think TikTok is really trying to squash that and capture as much of those final conversions as they can." PYMNTS has contacted TikTok for comment but has not yet gotten a reply. Business Insider noted that other major players in the eCommerce space - Walmart and Target among them - have similar membership programs aimed at boosting customer loyalty through offerings like free shipping and special discounts. The report also pointed out that TikTok Shop Plus is the latest in a series of product releases and strategy shifts at the company that are in line with Amazon's services, including full-service shipping and fulfillment for merchants, and speedy delivery windows for customers. In other eCommerce news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the way Amazon and Walmart are now "competing to control a longer, more fragmented cycle of consumer attention." According to PYMNTS Intelligence research, an estimated 244 million U.S. consumers, or 93% of adults, shopped at least one of the two company's recent shopping events, up from 135 million the prior year. Meanwhile, the share of consumers who took part in neither promotion plunged from 48% to 7%. However, PYMNTS added, the bigger crowd came with a catch, as shoppers cut their spending. The research found average spending at Amazon dropped from $360 in 2025 to $308, while Walmart's average fell from $484 to $326. "That trade-off offers a preview of the next phase of promotional retail," the report added. "The biggest shopping events may attract more people than ever, but they are also becoming less capable of concentrating consumer spending in one place."

TikTok is testing a rival to Amazon Prime as it looks to create a US e-commerce giant. July 24, 2026 * TikTok is testing a membership program for shoppers called TikTok Shop Plus. * Like Amazon Prime, the offering includes discounts, coupons, and free shipping on some items. * Shop Plus may help the company build stronger customer loyalty and avoid losing sales to Amazon. TikTok is ripping a page from Amazon's playbook. The social-video app is testing a Prime-style membership program for some US shoppers, according to screenshots of the offering viewed by Business Insider. The program, called TikTok Shop Plus, is built into Shop, its e-commerce platform. Like Amazon Prime, it offers members a mix of perks like free shipping, product discounts, and coupons. In one example of the service in action, a hair product normally sold on TikTok for around $57 was discounted to $47 for Plus members, along with free three-day shipping. In another, Plus members were offered a $5 discount on a beauty product that normally costs close to $50. TikTok is testing the Plus service at various price points, including $6, $10, or $15 a month, according to screenshots viewed by Business Insider. Sponsored Content TikTok did not respond to a request for comment. The introduction of a membership program could help TikTok keep its shoppers from leaving its app to make purchases, a former Shop staffer said. "TikTok, for a long time, watched a lot of their bottom-funnel buyers go over to Amazon," the ex-staffer said. People would see an item on TikTok and "run over to Amazon to make a purchase," they added. "I think TikTok is really trying to squash that and capture as much of those final conversions as they can," they continued. Other large US e-commerce players like Walmart and Target have offered similar membership programs designed to engender customer loyalty, offering free shipping and special discounts for a fee. TikTok Shop Plus is the latest in a string of product releases and strategy shifts at the ByteDance-founded company that have mirrored offerings popularized by Amazon. Like Amazon, TikTok offers its own full-service shipping and fulfillment service to merchants. It has also leaned into buyer-friendly offerings, such as fast delivery windows. The overlap in ideas isn't surprising. TikTok hired dozens of Amazon staffers to join its team when it prepared to launch in the US in 2023. Current and former TikTok employees previously told Business Insider that its early staff meetings sometimes felt like Amazon alumni reunions, and that the company adopted similar internal practices, such as using narrative memos to share ideas and encouraging single-person ownership of projects from start to finish. TikTok's US e-commerce business, which EMARKETER - a Business Insider sister company - forecasts could cross $23 billion in sales this year, is still a small player compared to Amazon, which EMARKETER expects will make more than $500 billion in US sales in 2026. TikTok is thinking long-term about how it can further crack the US market and build a shopping marketplace that comes closer to the hundreds of billions of dollars its Chinese sister app, Douyin, drives in annual sales. "There are brands now that are TikTok-Shop first and do their new launches exclusively on TikTok," said Kierra Butcher, a TikTok agency partner who works with Shop creators. "TikTok has proven itself as a marketplace, and the opportunities have continued to grow with time."