TikTok USDS JV, the corporate management group responsible for TikTok in the U.S., announced two new partnerships on Tuesday designed to expand the app’s child protection efforts and contribute to industry-wide progress toward improving detection of CSAM content.
First, TikTok USDS has joined Lantern, which is a centralized platform for reporting and sharing information to stamp out such activity.
Launched in 2023 by the Tech Coalition, Lantern works with participating platforms to share data signals related to CSAM content. This information can be used to “uncover patterns of abuse, and strengthen enforcement across platforms and services,” per Lantern’s website.
TikTok joins a list of 38 companies including Meta, Google, Discord, Reddit, X, Snap and Twitch in contributing to this project.
TikTok also announced an expanded partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). This new alliance means the app will share more data with the group to assist in legal enforcement of detected concerns.
In addition, TikTok has committed $2 million in funding for NCMEC, which will contribute to the group’s efforts to modernize its CyberTipline.
As per TikTok: “Our contribution directly supports NCMEC’s three-year campaign to transform the CyberTipline from a legacy system into a cutting-edge, AI-powered infrastructure. This investment will help NCMEC deploy advanced search, automation, and analysis tools to detect harm sooner, cut manual processing times in half, and accelerate actionable reports to law enforcement when a child’s safety is on the line.”
The announcements come after Meta recently put pressure on TikTok to improve its child protection efforts as part of Meta’s recent $18 billion settlement of a lawsuit regarding child protection.
As part of that agreement, Meta announced a plan to implement usage restrictions on teens. The company also urged both TikTok and YouTube to take up this mantle as a show of broader industry solidarity.
TikTok has not yet agreed to implement teen usage time limits, but this week’s announcement of expanded support for protection and reporting measures could be part of the app’s efforts to align with a broader goal and avoid any negative PR blowback resulting from Meta’s deflection.
