TikTok has announced that it is now a member of the Technology Coalition, an institution that strives to safeguard children from online sexual exploitation and abuse. The video-sharing platform is also joining the board of the Technology Coalition together with other committees that share the same mission of protecting children.
Tiktok also had previous partnerships with other online safety organizations such as the Family Online Safety Institute, ConnectSafely, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), WePROTECT Global Alliance, DQ Institute, and the Internet Watch Foundation to certify that their policies and features continue to provide users a safe environment.
Besides, Tiktok revealed that they ratified the implementation of the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in an attempt to guarantee a firm response to exploitation across services.
According to Tiktok, they are determined to keep their teenage users safe with the help of their Community Guidelines. They claimed that they do not tolerate content or behavior that perpetuates abuse, harm, endangerment, or exploitation of minors. And they maintained that such content will be dealt with immediate action–from deleting the content to deactivating the account/s, and reporting such matters to NCMEC and law enforcement, when necessary.
Moreover, the company provides age-appropriate experiences for teens around 13-17 years old. In fact, accounts of users ages 13-15 are automatically put in private mode while only those 16 and above have access to features such as direct messaging and live streaming.
Furthermore, the application is equipped with tools like the Family Pairing features that aim to spark conversations among parents, guardians, and teenagers to collectively decide on the appropriate browsing and privacy settings of the user. A few of these settings include screen time management and search settings. Thus, TikTok’s Safety Center For Parents provides more information on the resources and controls that are available to families.
Source: TikTok
This article was written by Julia Fernando.
Is this a way for TikTok to say “look guys we are protecting children; please ignore the accusations about collecting data available to the Chinese govt”?