It is common knowledge that it is easy for a child under the minimum age to register on a social network. But it seems that TikTok is even more lax about the moderation of its accounts. According to a Guardian investigation, a simple mention of one’s parents in the profile description is enough to avoid being banned from the application.
For several months, TikTok has been in the sights of regulatory authorities for its management of the data of its youngest users. The United Kingdom struck first, imposing a fine of 14.5 million euros on the Chinese giant. The country was followed by Ireland, much more severe since its local equivalent of the CNIL sanctioned the social network with a fine of 345 million euros. However, all these calls to order do not seem to push TikTok to take the necessary measures to protect children.
The Guardian thus investigated how TikTok handles accounts created by users under 13, the minimum legal age required to register on the social network. However, very often, the latter refuses to delete the accounts in question, even when they very clearly display their age. The reason ? All claim to be supervised by their parents, even when there is no evidence to support this claim.
TikTok does not ban children’s accounts even when they are too young
The British newspaper was thus able to consult an exchange between the moderation teams, bringing together around 70 TikTok employees, about an account belonging to a 12-year-old child. He clearly mentions his age in his biography, but specifies that his account is monitored by his parents. One of the employees asks his colleagues whether or not he should delete his account, according to the platform’s rules.
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The answer couldn’t be clearer: if the child is supervised by his parents, then he can stay on TikTok. According to The Guardian, moderators also agreed during an internal meeting not to ban children under 13 if a parent appears in one of its videos. “It’s incredibly easy to avoid getting banned if you’re underage. Once a child learns how it works, they will tell their friends about it,” testifies an employee.
TikTok would even go so far as to protect some who are clearly too young to use the application. The social network would thus apply “top creator” labels on certain profiles to ask moderators to be less harsh on published videos. On one of the accounts bearing this label, the child asks advertisers to “send him a private message for a collaboration”. One of his videos contains the hashtag #titktokdontbanme (“TikTok, don’t delete my account”) in the description. TikTok, however, requires you to be 16 years old to be able to send private messages. The account in question has fewer than 2,000 subscribers.
“These allegations about TikTok’s policies are false or based on misunderstandings, while the Guardian has not given us enough information about its other allegations for us to investigate,” reacted a spokesperson for the social network. “Our community guidelines apply equally to all content on TikTok and we do not allow minors under the age of 13 on our platform. » On its site, the platform claims to have deleted 18 million accounts that do not meet the minimum age requirement.
Source: The Guardian