NEWS
Protect Children, together with 38 other advocacy organisations around the world, signed a letter from Fairplay urging TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to address the design discriminations experienced by TikTok’s younger users to ensure that all young users can have a safe and private experience on the platform.
The design discriminations are highlighted in the recent Fairplay report - Global platforms, partial protections: Design discriminations on social media platforms, which Protect Children contributed to.
The report shows children in the US, Australia, South America & Africa have fewer protections than their European peers on TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
The report highlights a number of troubling disparities in platform features for young users from 14 different countries including Brazil, Indonesia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Finland. TikTok, for example, offers additional protections for European minors in order to provide “an age-appropriate experience.” Elsewhere, however, young users under 18 are not afforded the same protections, calling into question TikTok’s willingness to provide age-inappropriate design to young people in other countries. Each platform also had a range of different minimum age requirements depending on the country despite offering the same services worldwide.