Today, TikTok is announcing that they have joined the Technology Coalition, an organization that works to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse. Community safety remains TikTok’s top priority, and places utmost care on the safety of teenage users in particular. The new membership reflects TikTok’s zero tolerance of child sexual exploitation and highlights that this universal challenge requires a collective response.
Partnering with experts
TikTok realises that the industry is at its strongest when they work together, which is why the platform is proud to join the Technology Coalition. Through this membership, the platform hopes to deepen its evidence-based approach to intervention and contribute its unique learnings from addressing child safety and exploitation. TikTok is also joining the board of the Technology Coalition along with a number of committees that aim to advance protections for children online and off and increase transparency of evolving threats to child safety.
This membership builds on previous partnerships with leading online safety organizations, including the Family Online Safety Institute, ConnectSafely, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), WePROTECT Global Alliance, and the Internet Watch Foundation to help ensure that the platform’s policies and features continue to promote a safe and welcoming environment for the TikTok community. TikTok has also endorsed the implementation of the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in an effort to ensure a consistent and strong response to exploitation across services.
Protecting against exploitation
TikTok is deeply committed to the safety of minors on their platform. The platform does not tolerate any content or behavior that perpetuates the abuse, harm, endangerment, or exploitation of minors, as outlined in the Community Guidelines. If the platform becomes aware of any such content, they will take immediate action to remove content, terminate accounts, and report cases to the NCMEC and law enforcement, as appropriate.
Building for youth safety
TikTok is where people come to express themselves creatively, learn, and try new things. The platform works to design age-appropriate experiences for users aged 13-17 and offers a number of safeguards to support teens as they begin their digital journey. For instance, accounts of users ages 13-15 are set to private by default, and only users over 16 can use direct messaging and live stream.
Additionally, TikTok believes it’s important to engage parents and caregivers in digital safety conversations. That’s why the platform offers tools, like the Family Pairing feature, which aims to encourage conversations among parents, caregivers, and teens as they decide the browsing and privacy settings that are best for their family. Through Family Pairing, caregivers can link their TikTok account to their teen’s to enable a variety of content and privacy settings, such as screen time management and search settings. TikTok’s Safety Center For Parents provides more information on the resources and controls that are available to families.
There is no finish line when it comes to protecting the TikTok community. TikTok works each day to learn, adapt, and strengthen its policies and practices to keep the community safe, and looks forward to building on all of these efforts through their partnership with the Technology Coalition.
