LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators said Wednesday they're seeking details from TikTok on a new app from the video sharing platform that pays users to watch videos.
The European Commission said it sent TikTok a “request for information” on the TikTok Lite app that has been quietly released in France and Spain.
The commission wants to know about the risk assessment that TikTok should have carried out before deploying the app in the European Union.
Such evaluations are required under the bloc's Digital Services Act, a sweeping law that took effect last year with the aim of cleaning up social media platforms. The commission is the 27-nation bloc's executive arm and top enforcer of digital regulations.
TikTok Lite lets users "earn great rewards," according to its app store listing. The app, which launched this month in France and Spain, is slimmed-down version of the main TikTok app and doesn't come with ecommerce or livestreaming features. Rewards are restricted to users 18 years and older.
The commission said the app lets users earn points by doing things like watching videos, liking content and following content creators. The points can be exchanged for rewards including Amazon vouchers and gift cards on PayPal.
TikTok has 24 hours to turn over the risk assessment. The commission is interested in what it says about the app's potential impact on the protection of minors, “as well as on the mental health of users, in particular in relation to the potential stimulation of addictive behaviour.”
It's also seeking other information on the measures TikTok has put in place to mitigate such “systemic risks," which the company has until April 26 to provide.
FILE - The TikTok logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen which displays the TikTok home screen, Saturday, March 18, 2023, in Boston. European Union regulators said Wednesday, April 17, 2024, they're seeking details from TikTok on a new app from the video sharing platform that pays users to watch videos. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Before police officers poured into Columbia University on Tuesday night, arresting more than 100 people as they cleared an occupied school building and tent encampment, New York City Mayor Eric Adams received a piece of intelligence he said shifted his thinking about the campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza.
“Outside agitators” working to “radicalize our children" were leading students into more extreme tactics, the mayor claimed. And one of them, Adams said repeatedly in media appearances Wednesday morning, was a woman whose husband was “convicted for terrorism.”
But the woman referenced by the mayor wasn't on Columbia's campus this week, isn't among the protesters who were arrested and has not been accused of any crime.
Nahla Al-Arian, 63, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Adams had misstated both her role in the protests and the facts about her husband, Sami Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor and prominent Palestinian activist.
He was arrested in 2003 on charges of supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in the 1980s and 1990s, but a jury declined to convict him of any charges. The complicated case remained in legal limbo for years, even after he took a plea deal on a lesser charge that his family said he accepted to get out of jail and end their suffering. He was deported to Turkey in 2015, ending a case seen by some as an example of excessive government overreach.
A retired elementary school teacher, Nahla Al-Arian said she did go to Columbia — but not to teach anyone about civil disobedience.
“The whole thing is a distraction because they are very scared that the young Americans are aware for the first time of what’s going on in Palestine,” Nahla Al-Arian said. “They are the ones who influenced me. They are the ones who gave me hope that at last the Palestinian people can get some justice.”
She said she has lost dozens of relatives to Israeli airstrikes in recent months and wanted to see the encampment up close, so she stopped by briefly on April 25 while visiting New York City on an unrelated trip with her two daughters. She said she sat briefly on the lawn but did not speak directly with any protesters, whom she described as “busy and beautiful.”
“I sat and I felt happy to see those students fighting for justice for the oppressed people in Palestine,” she recalled. “Then I was tired, so I left.”
It was a photo of her kneeling alone beside a tent, taken by her daughter and shared on X by her husband, that quickly stoked allegations of a terrorism link to the protest.
The claim was parroted by right-wing social media accounts, including Libs of TikTok. One post that racked up over 1 million views on X erroneously said the woman might have been among protesters as police entered the campus. The post cited City Hall sources and has since been deleted. But the claim spread widely, fueling a narrative — vehemently disputed by student organizers — that Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement has been co-opted by external forces.
In an appearance Wednesday on “CBS Mornings," Adams, a Democrat, said that the NYPD's intelligence division had identified people among the protesters “who were professionals, well-trained. One of them was married to someone that was arrested for terrorism.” Pressed for details, he declined to name the woman, but suggested reporters could figure it out by looking at social media.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe," Adams also said his suspicions about external influences on the students had been confirmed after police identified a woman in the protest “organization” whose “husband was arrested for and convicted for terrorism on a federal level.” At a news conference later in the day, Adams suggested that Columbia students had been taught by outsiders how to barricade themselves to repel police attempts to remove them, saying, “These are all skills that are taught and learned.”
Police declined to provide details about what groups may have been involved or to say how many of the 109 people arrested at Columbia Tuesday night were not connected to the university. Even before the students entered Hamilton Hall, police officials previously claimed, without providing evidence, that an outside group was helping to fund and organize the encampment.
Law enforcement officials have long sought to discredit protests by invoking the specter of “outside agitators," dating back to the Civil Rights movement. Police officials in New York made similar claims during the demonstrations that erupted across the city after the death of George Floyd in 2020, at times labeling peaceful marches led by neighborhood activists as the work of violent outside extremists.
Students at Columbia have been open about the fact that they count outside community members among their movement. But organizers maintain their actions have been led by students, some of whom said they had closely studied tactics used by those who took over several university buildings in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War and racism.
In a statement, the group behind the encampment, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, defended its right “to include people from outside the Ivy League or the ivory tower in this global movement.”
“‘Outside agitator’ is a far right smear used to discredit coalition building and anti racism,” the statement continued.
Laila Al-Arian, a journalist who joined her mother at the encampment on April 25, said the mayor’s comments dredged up painful memories of her father’s years-long legal battle, which included lengthy time spent in solitary confinement. Adams, she said, "was appealing to people's most base racist instincts" to treat Muslims as dangerous outsiders.
“My mother wanted to see this beautiful act of solidarity up close,” she added. “For people to use my father to smear these students, who may not have even been alive when all of this was happening, is shameful in so many ways.”
Pro-Palestianian protesters gather near a main gate at Columbia University in New York, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, just before New York City police officers cleared the area after a building was taken over by protesters earlier in the day. The building and a tent encampment were cleared during the operation. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
Pro Palestinian students lock arms, sing and chant as they braced for New York Police Department officers to raid campus after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik called on the NYPD to dismantle encampments and remove individuals from Hamilton Hall, Tuesday, April 30, 2024 in New York. (Seyma Bayram via AP)
Officers with the New York Police Department stand outside Columbia University's Hamilton Hall as they disperse Pro-Palestine students and protestors occupying Hamilton Hall on Tuesday evening, April 30, 2024 in New York. Members of the occupation took over Hamilton Hall in the early hours of Tuesday morning. (Seyma Bayram via AP)
Nahla Al-Arian visits the pro-Palestinian protesters encampment on the campus of Columbia University, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in New York. (Laila Al-Arian via AP)
Pro-Palestine student activists face off with New York Police Department officers during a raid on Columbia University's campus at the request of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik on Tuesday evening, April 30, 2024 in New York. NYPD officers, including those from the police department's Strategic Response Group, arrested approximately 100 people as they dismantled encampments and removed individuals occupying Hamilton Hall. (Seyma Bayram via AP)
