TikTok’s endless scroll is under threat in Europe

Time could be up for TikTok’s metronomic For You feed, which pushes videos to users with clock-like accuracy. The endless scroll that defines the TikTok experience has been flagged as part of a broader set of features that make the app addictive by design, according to the European Commission. The regulator has issued a preliminary decision under the Digital Services Act, a sweeping piece of tech regulation, arguing that TikTok has not done enough to mitigate the risk of user addiction tied to those features.

European regulators have asked TikTok to tweak the offending system, along with others, to make the app less addictive or face fines of up to 6% of parent company ByteDance’s total annual turnover, reportedly forecast at $186 billion in 2025.

Under the terms of the Digital Services Act, TikTok has the right to respond to the European Commission’s preliminary decision and to contest it. A TikTok spokesperson tells Fast Company that the company “will take whatever steps are necessary to challenge these findings through every means available to us.”

If TikTok does push back and the two sides remain at odds, the result could be a prolonged standoff. “I am fearing that this will become a game of cat and mouse, but we will see I am interested and watching and grabbing the popcorn,” says Carolina Are, a social media researcher at the London School of Economics.

Still, some observers believe there is a real chance TikTok ultimately bends to the EU’s demands. “This is the future of enforcement action in the EU,” says Lilian Edwards, director of Pangloss Consulting and a law professor at Newcastle University.

Edwards notes that EU legislation such as the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the AI Act is not designed primarily to generate fines that “companies can shrug off.” Instead, the goal is to force “actual design changes to become less addictive and less toxic especially to children,” she says. She also points out that “companies have made changes for EU markets in the past though never at such fundamental design levels.”

There is precedent for TikTok accommodating political pressure to alter how its app operates, including in the very recent past. In the United States, TikTok moved toward partial U.S. ownership to satisfy a law enforced by the Trump administration, a reminder that compromise for continued operation is already part of the company’s playbook.

“What we saw with TikTok and the United States deal, recently, is that the app will change to continue operations,” says Jess Maddox, a social media expert at the University of Georgia. “This EU ruling is not an exception, so this could mark the end of the endless scroll, at least for minors. I could see TikTok then going the way of YouTube, with YouTube Kids, or even teen accounts with Instagram.”

Such changes could also extend to region-specific versions of the app, depending on where users live. Tama Leaver, a professor of social media at Curtin University in Australia, argues that this has already happened to some degree under the U.S. compromise deal.

That alone would represent a significant shift. But the ripple effects could go further if TikTok concedes ground under the Digital Services Act. “It’s an interesting moment for the architecture, considering that every other platform has to [potentially] redesign and tweak as well,” says Leaver. If TikTok’s endless scrolling feed is deemed addictive by law, other platforms could soon face similar scrutiny.

That prospect marks a turning point, says social media analyst Matt Navarra. “If this holds, infinite scroll, auto-play, frictionless feeds could become legally risky for the platforms, and not just ethically dubious,” he says. “I think the EU’s […] pretty much saying, ‘If your design patterns override self-regulation in young users, we’re going to consider that systemic harm.’”

The consequences could extend far beyond TikTok alone. They could end up reshaping social media norms entirely. “And I think,” Navarra adds, “that’s quite a bold and some might argue long overdue statement.”