Spain demands an investigation into material on the sexual exploitation of children on TikTok and allows for suspending the service

The ministry's appeal to the prosecutor's office

Spain's Ministry of Youth and Children sent a letter to the Attorney General's Office requesting an investigation into material on the sexual exploitation of children on TikTok, and allowed for the possibility of suspending the platform's operation in the country 'if deemed appropriate.' The appeal followed an investigation by the Spanish non-profit organization Maldita.es, the EFE news agency reported, citing ministry sources. The ministry described the study's findings as 'extremely serious' and called for a coordinated response from Spanish and European authorities, pointing to shortcomings in content detection and moderation, as well as the role of the recommendation system in spreading the material. Minister Sira Rego requested an urgent meeting with TikTok representatives in Spain so that the company could explain what child protection measures it has taken and what it will do immediately.

What the Maldita.es investigation documented

According to the report published on Monday, over 35 days of research the organization documented 1,182 public posts with explicit material on the sexual exploitation of children, which garnered 48 million views; TikTok's search and recommendation tools helped researchers find this content. Some sellers masked fragments of images with emojis or pixels while advertising full videos for sale; other accounts displayed explicit material openly, sometimes in profile pictures. The investigation also uncovered non-explicit photographs of children that were used to direct users to channels where such material was bought, sold, or traded. 'It is evident that content we previously associated with the darkest corners of the internet is now in plain sight,' Maldita.es wrote.

The platform's response and the scale of the problem

The researchers sent TikTok a sample of 50 videos through its own reporting system: the company removed five and blocked another 13 in Spain. Of the 231 accounts that posted explicit material, 136 remained active on October 15, the final day of the study. The most-viewed video garnered more than 4 million views before being blocked in Spain, and the account that posted it remained active at the time of the report's publication. The organization also identified more than 7,700 Spanish-language accounts whose owners boasted of possessing such material, requested it, or offered to trade it. The study covered 91 livestreams of minors from 17 countries: viewers offered children money to fulfill requests, including those of a sexual nature, during broadcasts from home or school. According to Maldita.es, TikTok's virtual gifts allowed viewers to pay children during livestreams, while the platform itself earned revenue from these transactions. The organization handed the evidence to Spanish cybercrime prosecutors and said it would publish additional findings in the coming days. When contacted, TikTok asked for additional information but, by the time of publication, had not answered questions about child protection measures.