TikTok warned it must buck up – or tough new laws will force crackdown

CABINET ministers last night moved for the first time to tame rogue social media giant TikTok by issuing a dire warning to stop kids from seeing sick content – or be forced to.

New Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden rapped the new video-sharing app for allowing children to access disgusting content within just a few swipes – as The Sun has highlighted in our TikTok Time Bomb Campaign.

We've told how campaigners and disgusted parents warned the app was a "magnet for paedophiles" after The Sun revealed how kids as young as eight were being targeted by predators and bombarded with sexually explicit messages.

And mums have told of their horror of finding their daughters get groomed online – and cops are powerless to act.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden told The Sun: "Every parent worries about how to keep their kids safe online. I'm determined to make sure our laws protect them.

"But government can't do this alone.

"Social media companies like TikTok need to step up to the plate and work with us to keep children safe."

The Government has been warning companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google for months that they face tough action in their upcoming online harms white paper if they don't make drastic moves to cull the abuse and horrible content being put online.

And earlier this month it was announced that the Government are set to give Ofcom the powers to regulate digital communications online – which could have the power to fine companies if they fail to act.

The video based social media app TikTok lets users create and share short videos with music and camera effects.

It's become a hit with kids all over the world, but features massive amounts of hyper-sexualised, dangerous and pornographic content.

Its lax security and moderation has allowed it to become a haven for crime, violence and extremism too.

The Sun is campaigning to highlight the dangers of TikTok, and encourage the platform to better moderate its content.

Experts have said it is a scandal kids are able to use the app.

John Carr OBE, Former Government Adviser on Online Child Safety said: "TikTok is not a place for children. A great deal of what I saw on Tik Tok last time I looked should only be visible to adults, or at the very least youngsters who are over 16 and can prove they are.

And Amanda Naylor from Barnardo's said: “Adults are exploiting children in environments where they should be safe to explore, play and be educated. Quite simply, we need to lock those doors and gateways to stop giving abusers access to our children.”

TikTok Time Bomb

TikTok has spread like digital wildfire, snapping up over 1.5 billion users since its global launch three years ago — including millions in the UK. 

On the surface, the world's fastest growing social media platform shows short clips of  lip-syncing to songs or showing off dance moves but there’s a far more sinister side. 

It’s become a magnet for paedophiles as well as a hotbed for violent and extremist content, with TikTok predators exploiting the platform's young user base and lax security to prey on the vulnerable.

We've seen kids as young as eight being groomed on TikTok, while other creeps take advantage of young girls posting sexualised content of themselves on the platform.

And that's especially worrying on a site which is attracting millions more children every year, with 53 per cent of kids now owning a smartphone by the age of seven.

That's why we launched our TikTok Time Bomb series — to make sure parents are aware of the risks their kids are being exposed to, and what they can do to better protect them. 

Everyone agrees social media can be a force for good, but it has to be used the right way and with proper controls in place.

We want TikTok to better moderate its content so that its not being left to kids to protect themselves online. 

Last week, TikTok announced a new feature to allow parents to control what their kids view.

A spokesperson said: "Promoting a positive and safe app environment for our users is a top priority for TikTok.

"We use both technologies and human moderation teams to identify, review and remove dangerous or abusive content.

"We have a number of protective measures in place to reduce the opportunity for misuse and we're constantly evolving our measures to further strengthen safety on TikTok.

"While our protections won't catch every instance of inappropriate content, we continue to rapidly expand our content moderation teams and improve our technologies and policies so that TikTok can remain a place for positive creative expression."

Take control of TikTok – change these settings now

Parents should do the following immediately…

Go private:

• Head into Settings > Privacy and Safety and look for the Discoverability heading at the top.
• Under that you'll see a setting called Private Account. Toggle this on.
• TikTok recommends your page to lots of other users to improve video circulation.
• Switch the setting off and the account will no longer be recommended to other users.

Shut out weirdos:

• In Privacy and Safety > Safety, you can prevent other users from interacting with you.
• Most of the settings are on Everyone by default, but can be changed to Friends or Off.
• You can prevent interactions on comments, Duets, Reacts, users seeing which videos you've liked, and also messages.

Restricted Mode ON:

• Restricted Mode tries to limit age-inappropriate content from appearing for children.
• It's not perfect, and works through using computer-scanning systems – so some dodgy content will inevitably be missed.
• It's also possible to set a passcode to prevent your child from changing this setting later on.
• You'll find this in Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Screen Time Management.

Family Safety Mode:

• This setting lets you assign accounts as 'Parent' or 'Teen', giving you remote control over a child's TikTok access.
• You can set watch time limits, exclude inappropriate content and limit who can send messages.
• It's possible to do this from your own smartphone, so you can make sure your child is as protected as possible from anywhere.
• This setting is in Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Family Safe Mode.

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