EU court dismisses TikTok owner's challenge against gatekeeper label

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - A European Union court on Wednesday rejected TikTok parent company ByteDance's challenge against the European Commission's decision to list the tech company as digital gatekeeper.

The EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulates the behavior of gatekeepers -- companies that hold powerful positions in the EU’s digital economy, such as Meta, ByteDance, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, while acting as intermediaries between many users and businesses.

Following ByteDance's November challenge to its gatekeeper label, the Luxembourg-based General Court sided with the Commission, saying: "The Commission was fully entitled to consider that Bytedance was a gatekeeper."

The court said in a statement that the company met the DMA's quantitative thresholds regarding its global market value, the number of TikTok users within the EU, and the number of years during which that threshold relating to user numbers had been met.

It also drew attention to TikTok's increased popularity and said: "It had rapidly consolidated its position, and even strengthened that position over the following years, despite the launch of competing services such as Reels and Shorts, to the point of reaching, in a short time, half the size, in terms of number of users within the European Union, of Facebook and of Instagram."

Bytedance had argued that it was a challenger on the market and that its position had been successfully contested by competitors such as Meta and Alphabet, which had launched new services, like Reels and Shorts, which, by imitating the main features of TikTok, had enjoyed rapid growth.

The company can appeal to the EU's Court of Justice.