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Britain’s communications watchdog, Ofcom, announced on Thursday that it is starting an investigation to determine whether the social media platform TikTok is doing enough to protect children from harmful content, as required by British law.
“This investigation will determine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that TikTok is not complying or has complied with its legal obligations,” Ofcom said in a statement.
The investigation will focus in particular on TikTok’s method of verifying users’ age.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, says it is “convinced” it meets the requirements of Britain’s Online Safety Act, which was introduced last year to tighten legislation on children’s online safety.
“We strictly enforce age-appropriate experiences through platform rules developed by experts, as well as advanced technology to infer users’ age, in line with other major players in the industry,” a spokesperson said.
Kate Davies, Ofcom’s director for strategy and research, told BBC Radio that the regulator has reservations about this method of deriving age – a system according to which social media platforms estimate a user’s age based on his or her behavior online.
“It is not recognized in our guidelines as an effective method of age verification,” she said.
The UK’s Online Safety Act aims to prevent minors from being exposed to harmful content related to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography.
Technology companies must also protect children from misogyny, violent, hateful or abusive content, online bullying and dangerous challenges.
Archive photo for illustration. (Photo: Unsplash)
Companies that break the law can be fined up to £18 million (about R398 million) or 10% of their annual revenue.
Along with the announcement of the investigation, Ofcom also warned in a report that children can still “easily” locate pornographic websites that do not apply age verification through search engines.
According to the regulator, Google Search and Microsoft Bing are now working with Ofcom on practical solutions to make it more difficult to locate such websites via their search services.
Under the Online Safety Act, all websites and apps in Britain that offer pornographic content must use age verification to protect children from harmful content.