UK opens probe into TikTok’s child safety measures

Britain’s communications regulator has launched an investigation into whether social media platform TikTok is doing enough under UK law to protect children from harmful content.

“This investigation will seek to establish whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that TikTok has failed, or is failing, to comply with its legal obligations,” Ofcom said in a statementon Thursday.

It added that it would in particular look at TikTok’s age verification model.

TikTok said it was “confident” that it met obligations set out by Britain’s Online Safety Act, introduced last year to toughen laws around children’s safety.

“We strictly enforce age-appropriate experiences through expert-informed platform rules and advanced age inference technologies, in line with major industry peers,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Kate Davies, Ofcom’s director for strategy and research, told BBC Radio that the regulator had doubts about age inference, a system whereby social media platforms judge a user’s age by their online behaviour.