TikTok has been under regulatory scrutiny for several months over its handling of the data of its youngest users. England dealt the first blow and fined the Chinese giant 14.5 million euros. Ireland followed with a much harsher penalty, as the CNIL’s local equivalent sanctioned the social network with a €345 million fine. But all these calls for orders don’t seem to push TikTok to take the necessary precautions to protect children.
The Guardian therefore investigated how TikTok handles accounts created by users under 13, the minimum legal age to sign up to the social network. But most of the time, they refuse to delete the accounts in question, even if they clearly show their age. Reason ? They all claim to be controlled by their parents, even though there is no evidence to support this claim.
TikTok does not ban children’s accounts even if they are very young
The British newspaper thus managed to exchange ideas about an account belonging to a 12-year-old child among moderation teams that brought together approximately 70 TikTok employees. He clearly states his age in his bio, but states that his account is monitored by his parents. One of the employees asks his colleagues if he should delete his account according to the platform’s rules.
The answer couldn’t be clearer: If the child is supervised by their parents, they can stay on TikTok. Moderators also agreed during an internal meeting not to ban children under 13 if a parent was featured in one of the videos, according to The Guardian. “If you’re a minor, it’s incredibly easy to avoid getting banned. “Once the child learns how this works, he will tell his friends about it,” he said. testifies to an employee.
TikTok will even go so far as to protect some who are too young to use the app. That’s why the social network will apply “top creator” tags to certain profiles to ask moderators to be less harsh on posted videos. In one of the accounts with this tag, the child asks advertisers to: “send him a private message for cooperation”. One of his videos includes the hashtag #titktokdontbanme (“TikTok, don’t delete my account”) in the description. However, TikTok requires you to be 16 years old to send private messages. The account in question has less than 2,000 followers.
“These claims about TikTok’s policies are false or based on misunderstandings, and the Guardian did not provide us with sufficient information about other claims to investigate.” social network spokesperson reacted. “Our community guidelines apply equally to all content on TikTok, and we do not allow anyone under the age of 13 on our platform. » The platform claims to have deleted 18 million accounts on its site that did not meet the minimum age requirement.
Source : Guard
