Safety is ‘at the core’ of TikTok, European executive says

The safety of TikTok users “is at the core of the platform”, one of the social media giant’s executives has said as it announced 175 million people now use the platform each month.

Christine Grahn, TikTok’s head of European public policy, said users needed to feel safe in order to properly use a platform, and this was a key factor for the company.

She was speaking as the shortform video giant held its European Safety Forum in Dublin, where the company discussed upcoming new safety features, including looking into ways of using new machine learning technology to better spot under-13s trying to join the service, and announced plans to add more age restrictions to some facial effects and provide more information to younger users on how an effect might alter their appearance if applied.

“If people don’t feel safe, they are not going to bring their authentic selves to the platform and express themselves, and that means that we don’t have the platform that we’re hoping to create,” Ms Grahn told the PA news agency.

“In order for us to achieve the best result, which is, at the end of the day, safety for our users, we have everything to gain from working with partners of various sorts.

“We adapt our products based on the research that comes out of that work, and we also work with academic partners to integrate their experience.

“The end result is going to be so much better if we work together as a society to address societal issues rather than trying to do so in silos.”

Richard Collard, associate head of policy for child safety online at the NSPCC, said it was “encouraging” to see TikTok looking to tackle age-related online safety issues.

“Given the well documented risks and harmful content that proliferates on some social media platforms, it’s vital that tech companies do everything in their power to ensure the youngest children are not accessing their sites,” he said.

“However, age limits only work if they are meaningfully enforced. It’s encouraging to see TikTok recognising this challenge and taking responsibility by using technology to help them uphold their own terms and conditions and keep children safer.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg. Other social media sites must step up and find effective ways to assess the ages of their users.

“Ofcom and the Government also have an important role to play in compelling tech bosses to deliver age-appropriate experiences for all their users.”

Despite its efforts on safety, concerns have been raised in the US and elsewhere about the platform’s possible links to China – TikTok’s parent company is the China-based ByteDance – and critics have raised concerns TikTok could be pressured into handing over data to the Chinese government.

TikTok remains banned from government devices in the UK, and its future in the US remains uncertain over a law that requires the site to be sold by ByteDance by January or face being banned in the United States – although it is unclear if president-elect Donald Trump will uphold these plans when he takes office in the same month.

In response to these concerns, TikTok has repeatedly denied it does or ever would share data with the Chinese government, and has begun a £10 billion scheme to move its European user data to data centres in Europe to further enhance its security credentials.

The scheme also includes independent oversight by a British cybersecurity firm, NCC Group, something Ms Grahn hailed as “unprecedented”.

“We’re very proud of this industry-leading data security project, that aims to keep our users even more secure,” she told PA.

“There’s a number of different parts in this project, but maybe one of the most interesting is this unprecedented third-party external oversight by British cybersecurity company NCC Group.

“They are continuously monitoring the security gateways that surround the European enclave where we store European TikTok user data.”

She added: “From our perspective, this has been a massive undertaking – 12 billion euros over the course of 10 years – and we are quite proud of the fact that we’re building out this model, and we do see it to be truly industry leading.

“I think some of the aspects of this will also be industry-wide challenges, but we’re happy to be on this journey and we’re quite proud of the progress that we’ve made so far.”