Valuing the safety of young users, TikTok established new rules for the use of the social network. From now on, all accounts of people between 13 and 15 years old will be private by default.
The measure aims to limit who can see and comment on teenagers’ videos. Thus, only friends will be able to see the contents of the profiles of people in this age group and the accounts will not be suggested to other users.
With the new rules, even if the user under 16 makes the account public, TikTok disables the option for anyone to comment on the videos. This function will be limited only to friends or user can disable it completely.
Duet and Sew features, which allow users to interact with other people’s videos, will also undergo changes. In this case, they will be disabled for content from users under 16 years old.
The download of videos from accounts of people between 13 and 15 years old is also being disabled by the social network. The same will happen with the profile of young people between 16 and 17 years old, while Dueto and Costura resources will be restricted only to friends.
Online Privacy
In a note, TikTok believes that the series of measures will encourage young people to be actively concerned with the “online privacy journey”. Thus, the new rules will inspire them to take an active role and make informed decisions.
Since 2020, the social network has been adding tools for greater privacy control of children’s and teenagers’ accounts. The app allows parents to change their children’s settings and direct messages to children under 16 have been disabled.
The measures will also protect TikTok from possible fines. In 2019, the platform had to pay $ 5.7 million after the old Musical.ly app did not receive approval from parents of children under 13.
