TikTok对未成年人仍实施精准广告推送,虽表面合规却存隐蔽商业渗透。
The DSA's Blind Spot: Algorithmic Audit of Advertising and Minor Profiling on TikTok
- 用模拟账号对比未成年与成年用户推荐内容,实证分析算法行为。
- 未标注的商业内容中兴趣匹配度达正式广告的5-8倍,对未成年人影响更强。
- 建议扩大欧盟广告定义,禁止对未成年人的隐性内容精准投放。
青少年在数字环境中的时间持续增长,其尚未成熟的认知能力使其难以识别或抵抗商业说服。欧盟《数字服务法》(DSA)第28(2)条针对这一脆弱性,禁止对未成年人进行基于画像的广告投放。然而,该条款对“广告”的狭义定义排除了当前包括网红付费合作、品牌推广内容在内的实践形式,这些内容具有功能等同的商业目的。本文首次通过针对TikTok的算法审计,揭示了这一定义漏洞的实际运作。研究采用模拟未成年与成年用户(兴趣相同)的傀儡账号,自动标注并系统分析推荐内容。结果表明存在显著监管悖论:TikTok虽形式上遵守第28(2)条,对未成年人屏蔽了画像化正式广告,但披露与未披露的广告均呈现强烈兴趣匹配(比成人正式广告强5-8倍)。最强画像出现在未标注的商业内容中,创作者/品牌未标明付费合作或推广信息,平台亦未纠正或阻止此类内容向未成年人个性化推送。这说明未成年人仍通过与法规意图相悖的推荐机制暴露于算法驱动的商业内容之下。我们主张,应扩展欧盟法律中“广告”定义,涵盖网红与品牌推广内容,并配套禁止对未成年人的画像化定向投放。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Adolescents spend an increasing amount of their time in digital environments where their still-developing cognitive capacities leave them unable to recognize or resist commercial persuasion. Article 28(2) of the DSA responds to this vulnerability by prohibiting profiling-based advertising to minors. However, the regulation's narrow definition of "advertisement" excludes current advertising practices including influencer paid partnerships and brand promotional content that serve functionally equivalent commercial purposes. We provide the first empirical evidence of how this definitional gap operates in practice through an algorithmic audit of TikTok. Our approach deploys sock-puppet accounts simulating a pair of minor and adult users with matching interest profiles. The content recommended to these users is automatically annotated, enabling systematic statistical analysis. Our findings reveal a stark regulatory paradox. TikTok demonstrates formal compliance with Article 28(2) by shielding minors from profiled formal advertisements, yet both disclosed and undisclosed ads exhibit significant profiling aligned with user interests (5-8 times stronger than for adult formal advertising). The strongest profiling emerges within undisclosed commercial content, where creators/brands fail to label paid partnership/promotional content and the platform neither corrects this omission nor prevents its personalized delivery to minors. These results demonstrate that minors remain exposed to algorithmically targeted commercial content through the same recommendation mechanisms the DSA seeks to constrain. We argue that protecting minors requires expanding the definition of advertisement in EU law to encompass influencer and brand promotional content, and ensuring that any such expansion is accompanied by a corresponding prohibition on profiling-based targeting of minors.
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