U.S. Government Investigating TikTok: Report

According to reports, the Department of Homeland Security investigated TikTok’s handling of material detailing child sexual abuse.

The Financial TimesThe Department of Justice reviewed the way predators exploited a privacy function on the platform. 

Content that contained the sexual abuse of children was allegedly traded among private accounts and used the platform’s “Only Me” feature where videos were only visible to those logged into the specific profile.

The TimesSeara Adair (a child safety advocate) reported the incident to law enforcement.

TikTok was accused by being negligent in its duties of detecting and preventing grooming attempts, as compared with other platforms.

“It is a perfect place for predators to meet, groom and engage children,” Erin Burke, the unit chief of the Child Exploitation Investigations Unit at the Department of Homeland Security’s cybercrime division, said and called it the “platform of choice” for that type of behavior.

Burke claimed that TikTok was owned by ByteDance and failed to cooperate with the Chinese parent company. “We want [social media companies] to proactively make sure children are not being exploited and abused on your sites — and I can’t say that they are doing that, and I can say that a lot of US companies are,” she stated.

It is intended to be loved by teenagers.

For its part, TikTok said that it cooperated with law enforcement “as necessary.”

“TikTok has zero-tolerance for child sexual abuse material,” the company stated. “When we find any attempt to post, obtain or distribute [child sexual abuse material], we remove content, ban accounts and devices, immediately report to NCMEC, and engage with law enforcement as necessary.”

CNETReports state that TikTok emailed the publication to inform it that it didn’t know of any investigation by the U.S government.

“We are unaware of any of these government investigations, as the alleged by The Financial TimesHowever, TikTok does not tolerate CSAM. We read this story and reached out to HSI.