TikTok faces formal UK probe: Ofcom examines child safety and age checks
Ofcom has opened a formal investigation into TikTok in the UK, looking at whether the company is doing enough under the Online Safety Act to keep children away from harmful content.
A big part of the case comes down to age checks. Ofcom wants to know whether TikTok can reliably tell when a user is underage, because if it can’t, children may end up seeing material related to self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders. A lot of the attention is on TikTok’s age-verification system, especially age inference, which tries to estimate someone’s age from their behavior rather than checking it directly.
Ofcom has already signaled that age inference on its own may not be enough. The regulator’s view is that stronger age checks sit at the heart of the UK’s safety rules, especially on platforms that push recommended content to huge numbers of people.
The communications regulator, Ofcom, has announced it is launching an investigation into the social media platform TikTok – to find out if it's complying with its duties to protect children from harmful content.
The scale here matters. Ofcom says the UK’s third most popular platform for children ages 8 to 14, and kids in that bracket spend 8 hours and 45 minutes a week on video-sharing sites. Under the Online Safety Act, a breach could lead to fines of £18 million or 10% of global annual revenue.
TikTok says it has age-appropriate measures in place, along with platform rules and advanced age-inference technology, and says it’s complying with the law. But the company is also under pressure from several other directions: possible UK restrictions for under-16s, scrutiny under the EU’s Digital Services Act, and claims from advocacy groups that harmful material still reaches teenage accounts even when safety settings are turned on.
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