Welcome to ICYMI – a weekly snapshot of European news stories that have given me pause for thought. ICYMI is a chance for you to go beyond the front-page headlines and find out what other stories may be worthy of your attention.
Following the shock news that Fortune has made its entire European editorial team redundant, as part of a restructuring of its media business, this week we’re taking a deeper look at three stories that show how Europe’s landscape is changing.
- Why are the French flocking to Reddit?
- Is TikTok the answer to the media’s prayers?
- How could new EU regulation impact advertisers?
Reddit finally takes off in France
After two decades of steady growth, Reddit is now expanding rapidly in France.
Le Figaro reports that weekly active users have doubled year-on-year to 10.4 million members, while the r/AskFrance community has seen a 62 per cent rise in views.
Reddit has marked the occasion with its first nationwide campaign, “Entre inconnus, on peut tout se dire” (Between strangers, we can tell each other anything), spanning television, digital and outdoor advertising.
The development comes at an interesting time for Reddit. According to LinkedIn, citations of Reddit in ChatGPT have risen 436% in the past year, second only to Wikipedia.
The platform has become a key source for large language models, fuelled by its vast archives and structured topics, and has signed lucrative licensing deals with OpenAI and Google to provide data for AI training.
TikTok helps NU.nl connect with Gen Z
With newsrooms increasingly anxious that AI search engines will hoover up traffic before readers ever reach their sites, a LinkedIn post from NU.nl’s social lead, Frank Brinkhuis, offers a glimmer of hope: TikTok.
Since April, the Dutch news site has gone video-first, swapping static posts for five-to-six 30-second explainers each day across TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
The shift has paid off: TikTok views jumped from 250,000 in Q1 to 6.3 million in Q2, and 70–80 per cent of those plays came from under-25s, according to Elger.fm.
For publishers grappling with shrinking search traffic and ageing audiences, NU.nl’s experiment shows that there’s still opportunity to grow your audience, so long as you continue to adapt, embrace new formats and channels, and take calculated risks.
Elsewhere in Europe, HORIZONT reports that German media leaders have renewed their calls for the government to introduce a digital tax on global tech platforms.
The idea is that this levy could help to fund independent journalism, however the proposal is likely to meet strong opposition from deep-pocketed tech giants.
Meta pulls the plug on political ads ahead of EU transparency law
Les Echos reports that Meta will halt all paid political, electoral and social-issue adverts across Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp in the European Union from early October 2025.
The move is in response to the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation, which comes into force on 10 October. The law requires platforms to label every political ad, disclose the buyer, detail spending, and explain targeting methods.
Meta has called the rules “unworkable,” citing heavy compliance costs and legal uncertainty. With fines of up to six per cent of global turnover for violations, Meta’s withdrawal is significant.
Google made a similar move last year, but given Facebook and Instagram’s dominance in European political advertising, this decision will have far-reaching implications for campaigns and publishers alike.
About the author
Bastian Meger is Director at Tyto. He helps our clients create exciting communication opportunities that are relevant to journalists and their readers.