Under-18s will be banned from livestreaming on TikTok from November
(Picture: Peter Byrne/PA Wire)TikTok has announced a raft of measures to increase safety for minors and further crack down on abusive content, amid growing pressure on social media companies to create better safeguards for under-18s using their apps.
From November 23 TikTok will increase the minimum age to host a livestream to 18 years, up from the current 16 years. It also said it will allow hosts to exclude under-18s from livestreams of their choice in the coming weeks.
The app will also start auto suggesting keywords for hosts to filter out in the comments section, in a bid to tackle abusive comments during livestreams. The new tool will look at which words a content creator most often removes from their LIVE, before analysing the comments for them and recommending their filtering to the host.
The company said that during testing, the feature nearly doubled the number of creators using keyword filtering during livestreams.
“We want our community to make the most of the opportunities LIVE can bring without compromising on safety. We believe these industry-leading updates can further protect the younger members of our community as they start and build their online presence,” the company said.
The idea behind adults-only livestreams is that creators might want to exclude minors from certain comedy routines, for example, or limit a conversation about a difficult life experience to over-18s only.
OnlyFans company executives will be relieved that there appear to be no plans to make TikTok into a NSFW OnlyFans competitor, especially given the video app’s notoriously strict algorithm.
TikTok has largely managed to avoid the firestorm that Meta-owned Instagram has found itself in recent years, such as in the Molly Russell case, at least when it comes to the adverse effect its use has on teens.
Users on the platform need to be 16 or older to access direct messages and 18 or older to send virtual gifts or access monetisation features, and must be 13 or older to sign up for a TikTok account.
The announcements follow Instagram’s plans to start verifying adult users’ age via upload of an ID or a video selfie.
