Hello, Due to lack of moderation and insufficient safety controls, TikTok has facilitated a space for sexual grooming by abusers or sex traffickers. These abusers or traffickers utilize TikTok to view minor users and either comment and/or message these minors, often requesting sexually explicit videos or pictures. An advocacy group accurately called TikTok a “hunting ground” for predators to abuse children and Forbes identified TikTok as a “magnet to sexual predators.” For these reasons, TikTok is being named to the 2020 Dirty Dozen List. TikTok can make significant, effective steps to combat these issues by: 1. Automatically defaulting to private when users first set up their TikTok account, 2. Automatically default on the Digital Wellbeing’s Restricted Mode and maintain the Digital Wellbeing’s Restricted Mode without the need to reset it every 30 days, 3. Provide prominent in-app reporting systems for users to report other users that request, send, or promote sexually explicit content, 4. Enforce this policy by promptly removing accounts that engage in these actions, and 5. Raise the age rating in the app store.

Although TikTok has recently increased security measures and launched online safety campaigns in response to child privacy law violations, it continues to operate in a way that fails to protect its users. By default all accounts are public on TikTok, which means that anyone on the app can see what even minors share. Instead, TikTok should operate to default to safety, so that minors accounts are automatically set to private when the account is first created. While TikTok’s Digital Wellbeing tools attempt to allow parents to limit screen time and potential exposure to sexually graphic content, these tools are insufficient and are easily altered after initially being set up. Both the Screen Time Management [described by the app as a took ti “manage your screen time” with available time limit options as 40 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and 120 minutes—with 60 minutes being the suggested default] and the Restricted Mode [described by the app as “an optional account setting If enabled, Restricted Mode will limit the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences”] both require a passcode to enable and disable the settings. However, according to the app, for both settings “your passcode will remain valid for 30 days and then must be reset.” This places unreasonable and undue burden on minors to opt-in to protecting themselves again and again and again, and it is reasonable to assume that TikTok disables Restricted Mode every 30 days because it increases profits, which TikTok is prioritizing over safety on its app. Further the ability to report content and accounts that exploit or harass is not efficient. The reporting process requires the user to go to the predator’s profile on which the inappropriate content exists in order to create a report. Additionally, reports have been ignored or overlooked to the point where a petition was created and signed by 2,500 people in order to draw attention to the issue. Please publicly commit to solve these problems!

TikTok is facilitating grooming and sexual abuse, potentially even sex trafficking. Will you do something about it? The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) surveyed 40,000 schoolchildren and discovered that 25 percent of the children had livestreamed with a stranger and that one in 20 children were asked, while livestreaming or in the comments of a posted video, to take their clothes off. A spokesperson from NSPCC commented on the study, linking it to TikTok, stating: "We know that a significant amount of children are being contacted via popular livestreaming apps, such as TikTok, by abusers who are using them as a hunting ground.” TikTok has become an environment where exploiters pose as younger adolescents and initiate sexually graphic conversations. On one occasion, a child abuser had stalked a 9-year-old girl on TikTok and showed up on her doorstep impersonating a delivery driver. You need to automatically set people's accounts to private, don't reset the Digital Wellbeing every 30 days, and create better ways to report accounts acting in harmful ways.