UK Suspects TikTok and Reddit of Showing Teens Things They Shouldn’t

The UK regulator is launching an investigation into online platforms including video sharing site TikTok, forum Reddit and image-sharing site Imgur. Growing concerns about the social media companies’ misuse of children’s personal data have prompted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to scrutinise whether their algorithms are serving up inappropriate or harmful content to teenagers.

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The investigation will look into how TikTok uses the personal information of 13- to 17-year-olds when recommending content to them. The regulator is also interested in how Reddit and Imgur assess and verify the age of a user to protect minors from dangerous or harmful content.

The ICO introduced the Children’s Code of Online Privacy in 2021, which sets out measures to protect the personal information of minors online. The ICO’s current investigation will focus on identifying breaches of data protection laws. If breaches are found, the regulator will first pass on information about them to the online platforms and will make a final decision based on their response.

Information Commissioner John Edwards said the regulator was confident that all platforms had safeguards in place, but wanted to make sure they were robust enough. “The issue is what they are collecting and how they are working,” Edwards said. “I would expect their recommendation systems to have a lot of benign and positive uses of children’s data. My concern is whether they are robust enough to prevent children being exposed to harm, whether that’s through addictive practices or the content they are exposed to.”

Edwards stressed that the regulator is “not picking on TikTok” and hopes to dig deep into its recommendation algorithms and learn more about the “broader landscape” of social media through the investigation. TikTok was chosen as the target of the investigation “based on its growth trajectory with younger users, its market dominance and potential harm.” The regulator also cannot afford to spread its efforts too thin during the investigation. The regulator is most interested in the core technologies of digital platforms that are used in the fight for traffic and views.

Earlier this year, TikTok was banned (with a 75-day suspension) in the US over concerns that the Chinese government could access data collected by the app. At the same time, UK Technology Minister Peter Kyle said he was “genuinely concerned about their [TikTok’s] use of data related to the ownership model.”