• Samu Hällfors is the CEO of Framery, an office soundproofing business in Helsinki. 
• Hällfors mirrors how he runs his company in line with Finnish values like shared responsibility. 
• He said people in Finland are hard working and candid, with strong boundaries between work and home.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Samu Hällfors, the CEO of Framery in Helsinki. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2010, I worked at Logia Software Oy in an open office space. My friend and I were tired of constantly listening to our boss speak on his phone. It was impossible to focus on our work. When we brought it up, our boss responded: "Well, buy me a phone booth."

The only problem was that there wasn't one on the market. We gave up working for the software company that day, and Framery was born.

Framery is a 14-year-old company headquartered in my homeland of Finland that offers soundproof solutions for offices. Our office is in Helsinki.

As the CEO of a company in the world's happiest country, I mirrored my company's values and policies with many of the Finnish cultural aspects I admire. Here are some ways I'm running Framery in line with those values.

Mutual responsibility makes people feel safe

There are multiple parallels between Finnish society and how we've built culture at Framery, starting with psychological safety. A few years ago, Readers' Digest published a report about a social experiment where 12 wallets were intentionally "dropped" in various cities around the world.

In Finland, 11 of those 12 wallets were returned to their owners. In Finnish society, people feel a general level of safety because the culture is focused on the collective responsibility to care for and be honest with each other, regardless of the relationship or how well we know someone. We are a close-knit community.

I try to encourage this attitude at work. I never allow my employees to feel that mistakes or failures are their fault.

Mistakes still happen. When they do, it's usually followed up with a discussion on how to remediate for the future. As long as the root cause of the mistake is not laziness or negligence, then the responsibility is shared, and there is no place for blame.

I want my employees to feel safe exploring new ideas, taking risks, and making mistakes.

Work-life balance is a priority

The Finnish workday is usually eight hours, with a half-hour lunch break, so people have time for hobbies and leisure activities after work. In Finland, we believe there is a time to rest and work; regardless of what we are doing, we put our complete attention and concentration into it.

I make it a point to visibly leave the office toward the end of the working day and to enforce strict rules around maximum working hours so that employees can enjoy work-life balance.

Sometimes projects may require extra hours, but employees are encouraged to balance their workweek by taking time off or long weekends.

Extreme candor for the benefit of the group

The Finns are very honest and direct people. Though this may come across as naive in other cultures, we value communicating candidly, independent thinking, and bearing responsibility accordingly.

Large corporations usually have layers of bureaucracy that determine who gets access to what information. That leads to a loss of shared purpose, the idea that people within the organization are all aligned to the same mission.

At Framery, everyone gets to participate in our strategy deep dives. We share highly classified information with every employee so they have equal footing and more oversight on their day-to-day tasks. I always host the sessions, and there can be no more than 12 participants at once, so there's an opportunity to ask questions and debate.

There's the obvious risk of leaked information, but I trust my employees. I think there's a bigger risk in not telling people important information that will be helpful in their daily tasks. Plus, disclosing private employer information is illegal, and Finns understand their responsibilities toward their employer.

Celebrate independent hard work

Companies have recently become more stringent with return-to-office policies and employee tracking tools. I view this as micromanagement, which destroys the individual's sense of autonomy and purpose.

Finnish culture is deeply rooted in forward-thinking and preparation, stemming from their historical need to brace for harsh, protracted winters.

This ingrained mindset fostered a strong work ethic among the Finns, born from the understanding that diligent effort paves the way for long-term career success and longevity.

I think our employees know better than their CEO on how to structure their personal workday. Teams can decide when they want to come into the office and how they plan to execute their work. They are mandated by themselves, not by management.

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• Costco sells millions of dollars of gold bars a month.
• While the bars get snapped up quickly, shoppers are learning that buying is easier than reselling.
• Trading commodities, as it turns out, is full of complications.

Whenever Costco releases a batch of gold bars for sale, the supply sells out "within a few hours" as shoppers snap up the precious metal for a small markup over its spot price.

The out-of-stock notices give the allure of a hard-to-get item, but the wholesale club is still moving a lot of gold bars and silver coins — to the estimated tune of $200 million a month.

But the Wall Street Journal reports that some buyers who have gotten their hands on a bar or two are now getting a crash course in the complicated world of trading commodities.

Gold bars are one of the few items that Costco does not allow returns, refunds, or price adjustments on, so the only way to get your money back is to find someone else who will buy it from you, and that's more complicated than some expected.

"It's not like trading stocks," New York-based appraiser Lark Mason told the newspaper. "There's a friction between what you pay and what you actually get."

One shopper, Adam Xi, encountered those frictions. He was hoping to use the $2,000 gold purchase to boost his credit-card points but then had to search for a buyer who ended up only paying him $1,960 for it, the Journal reported. Another managed to turn a $850 profit — after holding the bar for nine years.

Although gold has been used as a medium of exchange for thousands of years, it's not really considered currency in the modern sense.

Unlike cash or even gift cards, Costco classifies gold bars as collectibles, which may or may not retain their value over time.

For that matter, the Internal Revenue Service also considers gold bars as a collectible too, and demands as much as a 28% cut of any profits on gold held for more than one year.

The bars themselves might be fun to hold and look at, but between the possible interest, taxes, shipping, and other expenses — not to mention the hassle of finding a buyer — trading gold just might not be worth the trouble, even at Costco prices.

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• Tesla shares have tumbled 66% from their peak as investors gear up for a growth slowdown.
• The stock drop has fueled an estimated $176 billion decline in Elon Musk's net worth.
• The Tesla CEO is now worth about $164 billion, down from $340 billion in November 2021.

Tesla's mounting troubles have dealt a heavy blow to Elon Musk's net worth.

In November 2021, the Tesla CEO held the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and seemed untouchable with an estimated fortune of $340 billion. He was more than three times richer than Warren Buffett at that point.

However, Musk's net worth has plunged by about $176 billion since then to $164 billion at Monday's close. The key driver has been Tesla stock, which has tumbled from a split-adjusted peak of $415 in 2021 to $142 — a 66% decline.

The share-price slump has slashed Tesla's market capitalization from north of $1.2 trillion to below $450 billion. Musk's net worth has taken a big hit from the decline because his 13% stake in the automaker makes up a big chunk of his wealth.

Musk's start to this year has also been dismal relative to his peers in the 12-digit club. He topped the Bloomberg rich list with a $229 billion fortune in January, but his net worth has crashed by $65 billion, or 28%, since then.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO now ranks fourth in the wealth rankings, behind LVMH's Bernard Arnault, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg.

Moreover, Musk is the only one of the world's 11 richest people whose net worth has declined this year. He's lost more money on paper than anyone on the list has gained, including Zuckerberg who's up $43 billion.

Tesla's stock has tumbled in recent months due to mounting concerns about the company. Musk told employees this month that more than 10% of the company's global workforce would be laid off, signaling demand for EVs is faltering.

The automaker delivered fewer cars than expected to customers last quarter, and has made price cuts that threaten to erode its profit margins.

Moreover, Musk is fending off fierce competition from Chinese rivals like Buffett-backed BYD, and has repeatedly underscored the painful impact of higher interest rates on customer demand.

Musk's fortune isn't completely tied to Tesla. He also owns an estimated 42% stake in SpaceX, the space exploration company valued at $180 billion in December, and a roughly 79% stake in X after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it last year.

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• China's workers are migrating from megacities to smaller towns because of economic challenges.
• Big domestic and international brands, like Starbucks, are expanding in these smaller markets.
• Migrants to lower-tier cities have disposable income that they're happy to spend on pricier coffee.

China's megacities are losing their appeal with some young workers, who are leaving them behind for smaller towns. Big chains like KFC and Luckin Coffee are following them.

Shanghai and Shenzhen both saw a net outflow of people in 2023, according to data Bloomberg cited on Tuesday from MetroDataTech, a Shanghai-based consultancy. MetroDataTech did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for data.

High-stress work environments and greater costs of living are pushing people back to their hometowns, Bloomberg reported. They're struggling to make it in big cities as the world's second-largest economy suffers from a flailing property market and slow post-pandemic consumption recovery.

Smaller cities' lower costs of living give reverse migrants more disposable income. Both Chinese and international fast-food businesses are eager to help them spend it.

It's a potentially lucrative move for the companies: When brand names like Starbucks open in small cities, people are willing to stand in line for hours and fork out over double the usual amount for specialty coffees, according to local media reports.

Going big on smaller cities

China's smaller cities aren't exactly an untapped market.

Around one-third of Starbucks' 6,800 outlets in China are already located in small markets, a local media outlet reported last year, citing Canyandata, a Beijing-based food and beverage data platform.

KFC and Pizza Hut operator Yum China, which plans to add 6,000 stores in China by 2026, is also betting big on small cities. Chinese cities are unofficially categorized into "tiers" based on gross domestic product, population, and political administration. The four first-tier cities — the biggest type of city — have over 15 million people each.

"Over half of our new stores have been in lower-tier cities in recent years," Joey Wat, the CEO of Yum China, wrote in a shareholder letter earlier this month. "A good share of our future growth should come from the growing pool of consumers in such markets."

Domino's operator DPC Dash, which operates in 30 cities, said this month that more than half of its 835 restaurants in China are outside Beijing and Shanghai.

Local food joints are cashing in, too.

About half the total stores operated by some of the country's biggest fast food chains, such as burger joint Fuzhou Tastien and bubble tea chain Mixue Bingcheng, are located in third-tier or lower cities, according to Bloomberg, which cited Canyandata. Third-tier cities have 150,000 to 3 million residents.

The cost of living crisis driving young people out of China's big cities is a trend that echoes across continents. Some young people in countries including the US, UK, and Korea are finding that they can no longer afford to move out of their families' homes. Others are giving up on hubs like New York City and London because they feel lonely, stressed, or unsafe there.

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• Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser praised China for making solar panels and electric vehicles affordable.
• The West has recently stepped up criticism over China's dumping of cheap green products on the global markets.
• Saudi Arabia is fostering closer ties with China and wooing Chinese investments and business partnerships.

China's green industries have an unlikely ally in Saudi Aramco — the world's largest oil company — who praised the world's second-largest economy for making solar panels and electric vehicles affordable.

"China really helped by reducing the cost of solar energy," Amin Nasser, the CEO of state-owned Saudi Aramco, said at the World Energy Congress in Rotterdam on Monday, according to the Financial Times.

"We can see the same now in electric vehicles. Their cost is one-third to one-half the cost of other electric vehicles," Nasser added, as he called for globalization and collaboration, per the FT.

Because China has made these green products so affordable, they will help the West achieve its target of cutting carbon emissions to a net zero level by 2050, said Nasser.

The West has hit out against China's overcapacity

Nasser's comments came amid the West's criticism that China has been dumping cheap solar panels and EVs on the global markets.

Earlier this month, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen slammed overcapacity and overproduction in China during a visit to the East Asia nation.

"China is now simply too large for the rest of the world to absorb this enormous capacity," said Yellen. She warned China against repeating its actions over a decade ago when it dumped products like steel on the global markets, decimating industries and communities.

Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, too, echoed Yellen's concerns during a visit to China when he called for fair competition.

Beijing has hit back against the West's accusations of dumping, framing the criticism as a tactic to limit China's economic development.

China, the world's second-largest economy, is undergoing a painful transition from its previous growth drivers of real-estate and lower-end manufacturing to the hot new sectors of EVs, solar cells, and lithium batteries.

Saudi Arabia looks to foster closer ties with China

Nasser's praises of China also came at a strategic time for Riyadh's relationship with Beijing.

Unlike the West, Saudi Arabia is cozying up to China.

In January, Faisal Alibrahim, the Saudi Arabian minister of economy and planning, told the Nikkei that his country thinks it's "very wise" to strengthen its relationship with China, among other partners.

"There are lots of opportunities for China to invest in Saudi Arabia," Alibrahim told the media outlet. "At the same time, we are prioritizing, investing all around the world, including China in terms of the opportunities there."

Saudi Arabia is trying to attract Chinese investors to pump money into its Neom megacity project on the Red Sea, which aims to drive the kingdom's economic diversification away from oil to sectors including tech and tourism.

As a key contributor to Saudi Arabia's economy, Aramco has good reasons to build closer ties with China amid the West's commitment to reduce fossil fuel consumption.

On Monday, Aramco announced it's in talks to acquire a 10% stake in China's Hengli Petrochemicals — the latest in a string of deals with Chinese refiners in less than 12 months. The deals are poised to expand Aramco's footprint in China.

In March last year, China brokered a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, prompting concerns over waning US influence in the Middle East.

Despite Saudi Arabia and China's developing relationship, the Chinese aren't quite present on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Friday.

"It is clear to Saudis that the country needs a robust relationship with China," said Alterman. "Even if China doesn't replace the United States, Saudi Arabia sees China as an important check on the United States, and an important supplement to what the United States is willing to provide to China."

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• Two helicopters in Malaysia crashed into each other in midair during a parade rehearsal on Tuesday.
• Footage posted by local media showed the rotors of one of the choppers striking the other vehicle.
• Local authorities said 10 people, all naval staff, died in the crash.

At least 10 people have died after two Malaysian navy helicopters struck each other in midair during a parade rehearsal on Tuesday morning, local authorities said.

Footage posted by Malaysian media shows both choppers flying low over a parade formation before one of the vehicle's rotor blades collides with the other. Both fall to the ground as shredded parts separate from the choppers.

The Royal Malaysian Navy confirmed the incident in a statement on Tuesday, saying that a maritime operation helicopter and a Fennec had crashed at a base in Lumut at 9.32 a.m. local time.

Seven crew members from the maritime operation helicopter died, while another three from the Fennec were killed, the statement said.

The Fire and Rescue Department of Malaysia wrote that both helicopters were taking part in flight training for a ceremonial parade and that firefighters responded to the scene at around 9.50 a.m.

The department said it deployed 21 firefighters from two stations. All victims were naval staff and declared dead by base army hospital staff, fire officials said.

The Malaysian navy said an investigative board will be set up to identify the cause of the incident.

Photos of the crash site posted by authorities show that at least one of the helicopters landed in a track and field training area, its body crumpled and mangled.

The Royal Malaysian Navy has used the Fennec, a lightweight French-made attack helicopter, for several decades. An online listing for its assets includes one of the 36-foot long choppers, which says it was launched in 2004.

One Fennec can go for about $5 million on the market, per some aircraft tracking sites.

The other crashed helicopter, a Leonardo AW139, was manufactured by Anglo-Italian manufacturer AgustaWestland. These are typically used for transport purposes, and prices for the AW139 can vary between $5 million to $10 million on the commercial market.

A US Air Force version of the helicopter, the MH-139 Grey Wolf, costs more than $39 million per unit, per the Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The AW139 typically sits up to four crew, and the Malaysian navy says it inaugurated three of the choppers in 2004.

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• San Francisco celebrated a new public loo with a mini-carnival complete with games, lemonade, and a live band.
• The public toilet initially cost $1.7 million with a multi-year deadline but had its price slashed to $200,000.
• Its installation marks the end of a yearslong controversy over the rising cost of public works.

The scandal over a public toilet in San Francisco that cost $1.7 million has ended in celebration after the new loo opened on Monday with a much-discounted price tag of $200,000.

That's according to The New York Times, CBS News, and The San Francisco Chronicle, who sent reporters down to the toilet's launch in the Noe Valley Town Square.

Residents held a small festival next to the public potty, replete with a live band, toilet-themed carnival games, lemonade, and chocolate cupcakes decorated like poop. Three local politicians attended.

People took turns to try the new stainless steel toilet, and NYT interviewed a man dressed as a human-sized roll of toilet paper. CBS captured footage of a performer dressed as the "Super Mario" character Luigi dancing with a plunger.

"This whole thing got so ridiculous, so why not be ridiculous?" Leslie Crawford, who organized the event, told The SF Chronicle.

The over-the-top celebration reflects the yearslong controversy that emerged when people discovered in October 2022 that San Francisco planned to build the toilet over two years for $1.7 million — even after plumbing had already been laid.

People actually wanted the toilet in the plaza; an assembly member meant to celebrate the launch of the loo plans that month but canceled after the cost was revealed, per The SF Chronicle.

The expensive toilet was soon lampooned on national headlines, and became a lightning rod for concerns about wastage in US government projects and rising construction costs for public works.

City officials said they were weighed down by high construction costs in San Francisco, as well as the need for environmental reviews and checks from multiple commissions.

Under intense scrutiny, the plans for the toilet began to unravel. California Gov. Gavin Newsom pulled the $1.7 million from the city, telling officials to figure out how to reduce the toilet's cost before they could touch the funds again.

Then Chad Kaufman, owner of the Nevada-based Public Restroom Company, offered to donate a modular toilet to the city, saying he would help pay for engineering and architecture work to install the loo. Per NYT, his friend Vaughn Buckley, CEO of Pennsylvania-based Volumetric Building Companies, chipped in.

With help from Kaufman and Buckley, the city only had to pay $200,000 to install the town square toilet.

With the toilet controversy drawing to a close, San Francisco Mayor London Breed is seeking to avoid a repeat event by announcing new legislation this month allowing city officials to pool small project budgets for group discounts on construction and equipment.

San Francisco has in recent years drawn attention for its quickly rising cost of living, with one modern wealth survey saying in 2022 that the average resident needs a net worth of $1.7 million to live comfortably in the city.

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• Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief, called MTG a blond, fur-wearing "beauty."
• "She is demonstratively heterosexual," Simonyan said of Greene on Sunday.
• The Georgia Republican has been a vocal critic of US support for Ukraine.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has just won herself some new admirers.

The GOP congresswoman was painted in glowing terms during a broadcast on Russian state television on Sunday.

"Marjorie Taylor Greene, you've just shown is a beauty. She is one of a few members of the US Congress who is trying to look like a person in an old-fashioned sense of the word," Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT, said of Greene.

"She is a blonde, who wears white coats with a fur collar. She is demonstratively heterosexual," Simonyan continued.

Simonyan lavished praise on Greene during an appearance on the Russia-1 talk show, "Evening With Vladimir Solovyov." Greene, Simonyan said, had been treated unfairly by the US media.

"Who is Majorie Taylor Greene? She is a 'conspiracy theorist.' She has 'extreme right views,'" Simonyan said, per verified translations by Russian Media Monitor. "As soon as a person says something that shows they are normal, America's enormous media behemoth declares them a conspiracy theorist and a person of extreme right views."

Representatives for Greene didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

It is unsurprising that Russian media outlets favor Greene. The Georgia Republican has been a vocal critic of US aid to Ukraine.

Besides trying to delay a foreign aid bill to Ukraine, Greene also pushed for an amendment that called for lawmakers to enlist in Ukraine's military if they voted for the aid package.

"If you want to fund the endless foreign wars, you should have to go fight them," Greene wrote on X on April 18.

Greene also threatened to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson after he managed to pass the aid bill to Ukraine on Saturday. The move, Green said on Monday, was a "total betrayal of Republican voters."

"Mike Johnson still hasn't shown Congress or the American people the proof that Russia intends to invade the rest of Europe after finishing its campaign in Ukraine," Greene said in an X post on Monday.

To be sure, Greene isn't the only US politician that Russian media has lauded.

Back in 2022, Russian state television reporter Denis Davydov commended Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. Lauren Boebert's behavior when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Congress in December 2022. Gaetz and Boebert, Davydov said, were the "brave ones."

"Congress members Gaetz and Boebert didn't clap. They demonstratively remained seated and didn't jump up. You can feel the fatigue in Washington over the boundless aid to Ukraine," Davydov said of the two GOP politicians.

The Russians, meanwhile, have managed to keep the war machine going and boosted their army's size despite sustaining heavy losses while invading Ukraine.

Earlier this month, US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli said in a House Armed Services Committee hearing that the Russian army "is actually now larger — by 15 percent."

"Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Russia will be larger, more lethal, and angrier with the West than when it invaded," said Cavoli, who is also NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.  

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• A Washington Post analysis found that Donald Trump is Truthing up a storm this election cycle.
• The Post found Trump drafted 760 all-uppercase screeds in the 487 days of his 2024 campaign.
• Trump's Truth Social posts have gotten him into trouble during his criminal trials.

Donald Trump has always been a high-energy poster, but a new analysis from The Washington Post reveals just how online the former president is.

According to an analysis of his tweets during his 2016 campaign and his 2024 campaign, the Post found that Trump is posting much more frequently now. Between June 2015 and March 2016, the president posted 18 times a day on Twitter. During his current campaign, which began in November of 2022, he posts around 29 times daily.

His current Truths contain many all-caps screeds, per the Post, which found in its analysis that Trump drafted 760 all-uppercase posts in the 487 days between November 15, 2022, and March 15. In the same timeframe, he drafted 570 posts insulting political opponents like President Joe Biden, and the prosecutors and judges working on his cases.

"President Trump uses Truth Social — which is as hot as a pistol — to speak truth to power and get his message out unfiltered," Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Post.

Cheung did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Trump's posts tend to be about his brimming legal docket of four criminal cases, multiple civil cases like the ones brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll and New York Attorney General Letitia James, and his persisting belief that he is the victim of a political witch hunt.

In Trump's Manhattan criminal trial, he's also pushed the limits of a gag order that instructs him not to post "threatening, inflammatory, denigrating" remarks on his social media about witnesses, court staff, and jurors. Trump's also been accused multiple times of inciting violence with his posts — he faced a similar accusation for his Twitter posts before the January 6, 2021, riots.

District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought a 41-count indictment against the former President in the Georgia election interference case, has also felt the wrath of Trump's posts. The DA faced racist abuse and calls for violence after Trump posted about his case.

The Washington Post's analysis also found Truth Social has become an effective bubble for Trump — the king of the castle on his majority-owned conservative social media site — to foster his rage. The former president shared hundreds of links from right-wing sites, with 407 links to Right Side Broadcasting Network and 318 links to Breitbart News, to name a few.

Trump might be deeply entrenched in his social media site, which he launched in 2022 after his ban from social media sites like Twitter. However, the company continues to experience financial troubles.

Since Trump Media & Technology Group — the company that owns Truth Social — went public at the end of March, the company's shares have continued to fall, going from over $70 a share to about $36 as of Friday, Business Insider previously reported.

Trump's net worth initially jumped to $7 billion — making him richer than billionaire George Soros. Following the loss in value of the company's stocks, the former president promptly lost $3.3 billion and is set to lose more.

The company also reported a net loss of $58.2 million in 2023, per an SEC filing from Trump Media.

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• TikTok's spinoff app, TikTok Lite, is under fire from European officials for its rewards program.
• The app doles out points for watching videos and logging in, which can be used on gift cards and vouchers.
• The rewards hub is for users over 18, but officials say TikTok isn't doing enough to stop minors from using it.

Digital regulators in Europe are clamping down on a new feature by TikTok that rewards users for consuming videos and interacting with creators, citing addiction concerns among children.

The European Commission said on Monday that it had opened formal proceedings against TikTok Lite, a spinoff version of the TikTok app that uses less mobile data and launched in Spain and France in March.

A key draw to the new app is its "Task and Rewards" program, which allows users 18 or older to earn points by logging in daily, watching videos, liking posts, and inviting friends to TikTok.

Users can earn such points on the Lite app by watching videos for up to 85 minutes daily.

The points can be converted into rewards like Amazon vouchers, gift cards, or TikTok coins — an internal currency that can be spent to send gifts to streamers and content creators.

But the commission said TikTok hasn't done enough to ensure minors can't access the rewards hub, and is concerned it can get kids addicted to the Lite app.

"We suspect TikTok 'Lite' could be as toxic and addictive as cigarettes 'light,'" said Thierry Breton, commissioner for the internal market in the EU.

TikTok has until Wednesday to submit its defense, which the commission said it would consider as it seeks to suspend Tiktok Lite's rewards program in the EU.

The platform was also told to provide a risk assessment of its spinoff app by Tuesday. European officials previously asked for it to be submitted by April 18, saying that TikTok should have already completed the assessment before launching the Lite app. However, TikTok didn't meet the original deadline.

"Unless TikTok provides compelling proof of safety — which it failed to do until now— we stand ready to trigger #DSA interim measures including the #suspension of the TikTokLite 'reward program,'" Breton wrote in a post on X.

In a statement to AFP, a spokesperson for TikTok said the platform was "disappointed with this decision."

"The TikTok Lite rewards hub is not available to under 18s, and there is a daily limit on video watch tasks," the spokesperson said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The commission said it was most concerned about the mental health of young TikTok users.

Breton said the app provides "endless streams of short and fast-paced videos" that may increase the risk of anxiety, depression, and addiction among kids, echoing similar worries among lawmakers elsewhere in the world, including those on Capitol Hill mulling a TikTok ban in the US.

TikTok is already facing a separate set of proceedings from the EU aimed at its main app, also based on concerns that its algorithm and video feeds could produce adverse mental health effects.

The double crackdown was launched under the European Union's new Digital Services Act, which compels internet companies to regulate their online content on their platforms.

TikTok, owned by Chinese company Bytedance, is subject to the DSA's strictest rules because it's been designated one of 22 "Very Large Online Platforms," which are classified as those with more than 45 million users.

The platform has seen sharply rising revenues in Europe in recent years, with annual revenue increasing 164% from $990 million to $2.6 billion in 2022, per its latest report from September.

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