The Public Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into the sale and dissemination of child sexual abuse material through TikTok, as has been advanced this Wednesday by El Confidencial. The decision comes after an investigation by Maldita.es documented the presence of thousands of profiles that use the platform to request, exchange, and commercialize this content, and after the Ministry of Youth and Childhood called for the intervention of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
The journalistic investigation, carried out over 35 days, identified 12,068 comments in Spanish from 7,725 profiles that claimed to possess child sexual abuse material, requested it, or announced its exchange or sale. It also detected 1,183 explicit videos and images that added up to 48 million views, figures that have opened a debate about TikTok's controls and its ability to protect minors.
The opening of the fiscal investigation represents a new step in the institutional response to the case, after the department headed by Sira Rego requested examining possible responsibilities and after the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) received a request to adopt urgent measures against the platform.
A journalistic investigation that exposed thousands of profiles
The Public Prosecutor's Office action has its origin in the work of Maldita.es, which for 35 days analyzed the circulation of child sexual abuse material on TikTok. In addition to the videos and images published openly, the researchers located 780 accounts used to attract potential buyers and 91 live broadcasts of minors in 17 countries, some with requests for sexual content in exchange for gifts or money.
One of the most worrying aspects of the investigation is the ease with which these contents could be found. According to Maldita.es, users accessed them through TikTok's search engine and its recommendation system, without the need to use special tools.
Journalists also checked deficiencies in moderation mechanisms. Of the 50 contents initially reported to the platform, only five were removed after the alerts. Some had been available for months.
The organization has transferred its findings to the Cybercrime Prosecutor’s Office, while the Ministry of Youth and Childhood sent a written submission on Monday to the General Prosecutor’s Office of the State to demand protective measures for the minors affected.
The Government asks for measures against TikTok
The Minister of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, described the events as “extremely serious” and requested an urgent meeting with the officials responsible for TikTok in Spain. Her department has called for a coordinated response from Spanish and European authorities and has asked that the possibility of temporarily suspending the platform’s services in the country be studied.
The request was also forwarded to the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (AEPD), invoking Article 66.1 of the General Data Protection Regulation, which allows adopting urgent provisional measures to protect the rights of those affected.
This Wednesday, the AEPD has announced that it has required information from TikTok about the actions taken to remove the reported content. It has also asked Maldita.es for the list of detected links and has announced that, once it has examined that information, it will order blocking access to the links in which unlawful processing of minors’ personal data is identified.
For the moment, the Agency has not announced a general suspension of TikTok in Spain.
TikTok removes content, but Maldita.es finds another hundred
The platform has started removing some of the reported posts and has restricted certain search terms used to locate child sexual abuse material.
However, this Tuesday Maldita.es found that the problem persisted. In just three hours, its researchers located another hundred posts through TikTok’s search engine and recommendations, despite the modifications introduced by the company.
TikTok has defended that it expressly prohibits this content and that it has technologies to detect and remove it. The company has also asked Maldita.es to share the entirety of the findings to facilitate their identification and communication to the authorities.