Madrid (AFP) – The Spanish anti-misinformation foundation Maldita.es will take TikTok to court for not doing enough to prevent pedophiles from exchanging illegal material or soliciting illicit content from minors on the platform.
First modification: 11/09/2026 - 18:16
During its investigation, which it began publishing this Monday, Maldita.es claimed to have found more than a thousand explicit videos of child sexual abuse on this social network, which had 48 million accumulated views.
"What you would expect to only be on the 'deep web' you find on TikTok," Maldita.es considered in its report.
Contacted by AFP, TikTok did not immediately react.
According to Maldita.es, which had already investigated the matter on two other occasions, TikTok removed just 10% of the content reported by the organization and blocked only 26% of the illegal material in Spain.
The researchers also found more than 26,000 profiles of potential pedophiles who exchanged or sold abuse materials on TikTok, of which 7,700 operated in Spanish, they added.
Although TikTok's rules do not allow minors to perform live shows, the investigation identified almost a hundred of these broadcasts in 17 countries, where viewers asked children to do things, some of a sexual nature, in exchange for money.
According to Maldita.es, the search engine of this social network, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, has not blocked keywords related to this content - as other platforms have done.
Maldita.es announced that it will file a complaint with the Computer Crime unit of the Spanish Prosecutor's Office.
"The findings of this investigation seriously call into question the effectiveness of TikTok's measures against child abuse," which contravenes the obligations stipulated by the European Digital Services Law (DSA) for these large platforms, Maldita.es noted.
The EU has launched a broad offensive to curb social media under the DSA and intends to ban it for children under 13 years of age, due to the numerous risks to their well-being and development.
© 2026 AFP
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