Adolescents spend an increasing amount of their time in digital environments where their still-developing cognitive capacities leave them unable to recognize or resist commercial persuasion. Article 28(2) of the Digital Service Act (DSA) responds to this vulnerability by prohibiting profiling-based advertising to minors. However, the regulation's narrow definition of "advertisement" excludes current advertising practices including influencer marketing and promotional content that serve functionally equivalent commercial purposes. We provide the first empirical evidence of how this definitional gap operates in practice through an algorithmic audit of TikTok. Our approach deploys sock-puppet accounts simulating a pair of minor and adult users with distinct interest profiles. The content recommended to these users is automatically annotated, enabling systematic statistical analysis across four video categories: containing formal, disclosed, undisclosed and none advertisement; as well as advertisement topical relevance to user's interest. Our findings reveal a stark regulatory paradox. TikTok demonstrates formal compliance with Article 28(2) by shielding minors from profiled formal advertisements, yet both disclosed and undisclosed ads exhibit significant profiling aligned with user interests (5-8 times stronger than for adult formal advertising). The strongest profiling emerges within undisclosed commercial content, where brands/creators fail to label promotional content/paid partnership and the platform neither corrects this omission nor prevents its personalized delivery to minors. We argue that protecting minors requires expanding the regulatory definition of advertisement to encompass brand/influencer marketing and extending the Article 28(2) prohibition accordingly, ensuring that commercial content cannot circumvent protections merely by operating outside formal advertising channels.

翻译：青少年在数字环境中花费的时间日益增多，其尚在发育的认知能力使其难以识别或抵制商业诱导。《数字服务法案》第28条第2款针对这一脆弱性，禁止基于用户画像向未成年人投放广告。然而，该法规对"广告"的狭义定义排除了当前包括网红营销和促销内容在内的广告实践，这些内容在功能上实现了等效的商业目的。我们通过对TikTok的算法审计，首次提供了该定义漏洞在实践中如何运作的实证证据。我们的方法部署了模拟未成年与成年用户对的傀儡账户，两者具有不同的兴趣画像。通过自动标注推荐给这些用户的内容，我们对四类视频进行了系统性统计分析：包含正式广告、披露广告、未披露广告及无广告的视频，以及广告主题与用户兴趣的相关性。研究结果揭示了一个显著的监管悖论：TikTok通过屏蔽未成年人的画像化正式广告，形式上遵守了第28条第2款，但披露与未披露广告均显示出与用户兴趣高度匹配的显著画像特征（强度达成人正式广告的5-8倍）。最强的画像特征出现在未披露商业内容中——品牌方/创作者未标注促销内容/付费合作，平台既未纠正该疏漏，也未阻止其向未成年人进行个性化推送。我们认为，保护未成年人需要扩展监管对广告的定义，将品牌/网红营销纳入其中，并相应延伸第28条第2款的禁令范围，确保商业内容无法仅因游离于正式广告渠道之外而规避保护机制。