Speaker 1: The thing that's funny about TikTok is that it even
Speaker 1: makes it twenty two year old feel old. Here's Ameliana Via.
Speaker 1: When I first downloaded the app, I posted a video
Speaker 1: of me like dancing in the club, like set some music. Um,
Speaker 1: and then I get a comment like five minutes after
Speaker 1: I posted. In the comment it's like yes, like teach
Speaker 1: me your skills or something. And I go to the
Speaker 1: page and it's like a little girl like she looks
Speaker 1: like eleven years old. Um. Yeah, And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is really like a kid's app. Like people
Speaker 1: aren't lying when they say that, and looking at an
Speaker 1: eleven year old dancing in her bedroom on TikTok felt wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't feel creepy. It felt creepy like
Speaker 1: looking at their stuff because I feel like I'm not
Speaker 1: the audience for it, and it's a little weird that
Speaker 1: it's so public. Amiliano isn't the only young person to
Speaker 1: tell me that he felt protective of kids on the app. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would not recommend like a young child a me
Speaker 1: app unless they have like parents supervision. That's Katie Pheeney.
Speaker 1: We heard from her in a previous episode. She's eighteen
Speaker 1: years old and spends about four hours a day on TikTok.
Speaker 1: But her message to the kids play outside more. I
Speaker 1: feel like when I was ten years old or nine
Speaker 1: years old, I was playing outside, and I feel like
Speaker 1: now like these kids are cursing and they're doing super
Speaker 1: like sexy dances, and I just I can't watch it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, please, don't do that. Go right
Speaker 1: a bike. And there's some corners of the app that
Speaker 1: a number of teens say are worth worrying about. Here's
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Mila Dilatore. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: weird stuff about like eating disorders. There was there was
Speaker 1: a bunch of really stupid, like disgusting trends on TikTok
Speaker 1: of like really underage kids. It's just like, it's such
Speaker 1: a scary thing, I think for kids, like fourteen year
Speaker 1: olds to be on TikTok because there's such disgusting stuff
Speaker 1: on there. So it's not just a bunch of old
Speaker 1: people that are concerned about TikTok. Even the kids are
Speaker 1: asking are the kids all right? Because for all the
Speaker 1: funny memes, dance routines and silly lip sinking videos, there's
Speaker 1: a dark side to TikTok, and it starts with a
Speaker 1: young children that have been on the app from its
Speaker 1: very start. You're listening to Foundering. I'm your host, Shelley
Speaker 1: Banjo a word of morning. This episode contains some very
Speaker 1: sad and disturbing information, including stories about the sexual exploitation
Speaker 1: of miners. And I did want to mention that I
Speaker 1: pressed TikTok at least five times to interview someone in
Speaker 1: charge of child safety. The company declined to make anyone available,
Speaker 1: but they did give us a number of comments, which
Speaker 1: will include throughout this episode, starting with the statement TikTok
Speaker 1: is deeply committed to the safety of miners. So up
Speaker 1: until now, we've been telling you the story of TikTok's
Speaker 1: explosive growth and how it took Silicon Valley and Hollywood
Speaker 1: by surprise. TikTok was able to achieve this success by
Speaker 1: taking a number of shortcuts. One of them was letting kids,
Speaker 1: even kids under thirteen, roam free on their app. That
Speaker 1: led to a firestorm among parents, police departments, and lawmakers
Speaker 1: that hurt TikTok's reputation just as it was hitting it
Speaker 1: big in the US. We'll tell you more after a
Speaker 1: quick Break. TikTok's problems with young children actually began years
Speaker 1: before TikTok even existed. It goes all the way back
Speaker 1: to when TikTok was still called Musically. When the Musically
Speaker 1: app first started getting popular, investors called it the world's
Speaker 1: youngest social network because it's audience included kids in elementary school.
Speaker 1: At the time, Disney songs were popular in the apps
Speaker 1: music library, and unlike Instagram and YouTube, Musically didn't prompt
Speaker 1: users to disclose their ages. Here's Josh Constein speaking with
Speaker 1: Musically's founder, Alex jew at a conference in Josh was
Speaker 1: a journalist at tech Crunch. So I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: terrified because some of the kids that I see on
Speaker 1: this app seem extremely young. I mean it's not just
Speaker 1: under thirteen or not just thirteen year olds, which are
Speaker 1: actually allowed on most services like Facebook and Instagram, but
Speaker 1: kids that look like they're eleven nine, seven years old.
Speaker 1: And these are kids with millions of followers, and some
Speaker 1: of them are acting quite provocatively. Most social media companies
Speaker 1: draw the line at thirteen years old to avoid running
Speaker 1: a foul of a federal law called Kappa that's the
Speaker 1: children's online Privacy Protection Act KAPPA limits how much information
Speaker 1: apps can collect from kids under thirteen. It's one of
Speaker 1: the only federal laws in the US that protects kids online.
Speaker 1: It's meant to keep them away from sexual predators and
Speaker 1: others who might have suppoitt them. Does musically abide by
Speaker 1: the Child Online Privacy Protection Room? Absolutely? How do you
Speaker 1: guys abide by that? Because you don't. You don't ask
Speaker 1: users for their age, right, So that's actually uh compliant
Speaker 1: with the regulation, that's not that's feigning ignorance though. Right
Speaker 1: Alex is on stage and meaning he intentionally didn't ask
Speaker 1: kids to enter their ages before signing up, and he
Speaker 1: defended that decision, right. But we we could do something
Speaker 1: similar to snapchat right collecting the age the year of births.
Speaker 1: But those kids there were anyway say they over certain, right,
Speaker 1: So that doesn't really change the conversation for us. The
Speaker 1: most important thing is we have to make sure the
Speaker 1: environment is a safety We put a lot of resource
Speaker 1: and technology in place to make sure everything is safety.
Speaker 1: And going back to to your previous point, a lot
Speaker 1: of users, especially top users, the under certain but they
Speaker 1: are being monitored by parents. So we do have wit
Speaker 1: chat communication we sell parents own daily basis, So Alex
Speaker 1: had many parents download wha Chat. It's a Chinese messaging app,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to What's App or Facebook Messenger. That way,
Speaker 1: Alex and his team in Shanghai could keep in touch
Speaker 1: with the parents by essentially texting back and forth. But
Speaker 1: as the app hit more than a hundred million registered
Speaker 1: users in the US, people started asking how they could
Speaker 1: possibly get permission from all of these parents. But I
Speaker 1: still don't understand though. If it's if these kids are
Speaker 1: under thirteen and you're providing their you know, contact information, photographs,
Speaker 1: real names, user names, all things that are prohibited by
Speaker 1: the Online Protection Act for Children. How I don't understand
Speaker 1: how that's not a violation. But the parents give the permission.
Speaker 1: It is being momented by the parents. That's a point.
Speaker 1: But there can't be that all these kids, I mean,
Speaker 1: so many parents don't even know what this app is.
Speaker 1: But if you go, how do all there's You're telling
Speaker 1: me that every kid that's under thirteen on your platform,
Speaker 1: how their parents permission? I can't guarantee, as far as
Speaker 1: I know, is being wanted by the parents. I understand
Speaker 1: that you guys have have faigned that you don't know
Speaker 1: the ages of users before, or that their parents are
Speaker 1: always involved. Honestly, looking at this content, I think that
Speaker 1: this is something that you guys should really be looking
Speaker 1: deeper into. I was surprised by how hard Josh Constein
Speaker 1: is questioning Alex here. Tech conferences usually showcase a founder's success,
Speaker 1: not this. It's also just strange to hear Alex caught
Speaker 1: so completely on his back foot from the get go.
Speaker 1: Alex seemed to know just how he wanted his app
Speaker 1: to look and feel. He had a vision for how
Speaker 1: to handle creators and how to work with the music industry.
Speaker 1: So why was he so careless about the young users
Speaker 1: on his platform. The way he handled this problem seems sloppy,
Speaker 1: and this would come back to bite him. I remember
Speaker 1: the founder of Musically had actually been interviewed at the
Speaker 1: conference with an industry conference where he was asked in
Speaker 1: detail about their cop of compliance and he said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of kids under thirteen. But then
Speaker 1: everybody said no, but we don't have a problem their
Speaker 1: parents know, and he was really given a hard time
Speaker 1: and it was really I mean, it just was pretty blatant.
Speaker 1: So most companies don't do things like that. That's Angela Campbell,
Speaker 1: an attorney who has spent decades working on child privacy issues.
Speaker 1: She was among a group of lawyers who failed to
Speaker 1: complain against TikTok to the Federal Trade Commission. So in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, about a year after Byte Dance bought Musically
Speaker 1: and folded it into TikTok, it came out that TikTok
Speaker 1: had become the subject of a federal investigation. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were just so many little kids on the app
Speaker 1: back then. It was unbelievable. Um such a clear cop
Speaker 1: of violation. They had lots of kids songs they had,
Speaker 1: you know, like baby Shark was one of the things
Speaker 1: you could lip sync too. So even though they said
Speaker 1: they were only intended for over thirty, it was clear
Speaker 1: that that wasn't the case. They were directed their children,
Speaker 1: and also that they knew that they had kids on there.
Speaker 1: The cop of violations were apparently so clear that the
Speaker 1: federal government stepped in. In February nineteen, the FTC alleged
Speaker 1: the app was collecting personal information from kids without their
Speaker 1: parents consent. The U. S Government slapped TikTok's Chinese parent company,
Speaker 1: Bye Dance, with a five point seven million dollar fine.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was the largest ever child privacy
Speaker 1: settlement in US history. TikTok's unchecked growth appeared to be
Speaker 1: at risk. They agreed to make a number of changes,
Speaker 1: including deleting the profiles of kids under thirteen, and they
Speaker 1: put out a statement today the FTC announced a settlement
Speaker 1: agreement related to Musically. It's our priority to create a
Speaker 1: safe and welcoming experience for all of our users. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking that the statement was so backward looking. It
Speaker 1: focused on Musically, which at that point had been defunct
Speaker 1: for almost a year, and it seemed to lay the
Speaker 1: blame squarely on Musically's founder, Alex jew The company was
Speaker 1: framing the FTC fine as a problem with its previous self,
Speaker 1: an ugly issue TikTok left behind when it stopped being Musically,
Speaker 1: but things didn't work out that way. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Don Hawkins runs a group called the National Center on
Speaker 1: Sexual Exploitation. She says a few things surprise her anymore
Speaker 1: when it comes to kids on social media. Until one
Speaker 1: of our family members got on TikTok. He's eight years old.
Speaker 1: His second grade teacher um suggested that all of the
Speaker 1: students get on TikTok as a way to kind of
Speaker 1: bond and stay close. They could they could make funny
Speaker 1: videos together, et cetera. UM obviously see a lot wrong
Speaker 1: with that. Kids are not suppose of you on these
Speaker 1: platforms until they're thirteen or older. UM and eight year
Speaker 1: old especially, there's a lot out of problematic content on
Speaker 1: there um for their little brains to handle. Don says
Speaker 1: his eight year old parents agree to let their son
Speaker 1: on TikTok because they thought TikTok was safe and because
Speaker 1: his teacher thought it would be a fun thing to try.
Speaker 1: I found out he hit was on it and took
Speaker 1: a look at his account, and I found that thirty
Speaker 1: two men had written him private messages, and some of
Speaker 1: the messages contained links to disturbing images. But Dawn says
Speaker 1: they were too subtle for an eight year old to
Speaker 1: understand how and why they were wrong. So often it
Speaker 1: was just like, hey, you're so cute, how are you?
Speaker 1: Will you send me these videos? Some of them sent
Speaker 1: images of their um, of their penises and asked them
Speaker 1: for pictures of his. A couple of them did say
Speaker 1: it's a challenge. Others just said, hey, you should do this,
Speaker 1: and wear this and and he just did it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just did it. And then things got even more disturbing,
Speaker 1: and some of the men asked him, I think that
Speaker 1: they were men, asked him to create some videos in
Speaker 1: his underwear and gave him exact videos to copy and
Speaker 1: dance moves to copies, which he did and um. And
Speaker 1: we then found that some of them had recorded his
Speaker 1: videos and then reposted them. And this was perhaps the
Speaker 1: worst part. The videos were being shared widely, and so
Speaker 1: his videos had, you know, like under twenty views and um,
Speaker 1: but the videos that they reposted of him had tens
Speaker 1: of thousands and um. And you know, he's in his
Speaker 1: underwear dancing in a very sexually like suggestive way. Um.
Speaker 1: Not realizing what it means, John broke the news to
Speaker 1: her young relative about what happened with his videos, like
Speaker 1: his whole body language changed, and he said, he's so embarrassed,
Speaker 1: and he didn't know that it could be sent out there.
Speaker 1: He posted it on his own channel, How how is
Speaker 1: it possible that it could be on someone else's. He
Speaker 1: didn't give permission. And the rest of that day he
Speaker 1: kept coming to me asking how could they copy it?
Speaker 1: Why would they do that to him that was just
Speaker 1: for him and his friends. His little eight year old
Speaker 1: self is so traumatized that it's it's out there, and
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Are his friends at school are
Speaker 1: going to see it? And and so forth. I spoke
Speaker 1: to don about nine months after the videos went up.
Speaker 1: Her family was still trying to get them removed. He's
Speaker 1: working with some police now. I think the police are
Speaker 1: asking for those videos to come down. And did he
Speaker 1: delete TikTok or is he still on it? You know what,
Speaker 1: These kids love it and it is so fun, right,
Speaker 1: so once he's experienced it, he it's really hard to
Speaker 1: take it away. So um it isn't fully deleted, but
Speaker 1: he's only allowed to be on it when a parent
Speaker 1: or an adult is sitting with him. It's pretty telling
Speaker 1: that after something like this happened, this eight year old
Speaker 1: is still on TikTok. But that just speaks to how
Speaker 1: addictive app is. TikTok started asking users for their date
Speaker 1: of birth in twenty nineteen, and the spokesperson told me
Speaker 1: they'll delete the accounts of kids that they find are
Speaker 1: lying about their age. But Bloomberg has reported that the
Speaker 1: FTC and the Department of Justice are looking into allegations
Speaker 1: that TikTok hasn't followed through with these promises. When the
Speaker 1: story came out, TikTok gave us a statement, we take
Speaker 1: the issue of safety seriously for all our users, and
Speaker 1: we continue to further strengthen our safeguards. TikTok has become
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous now among teens that what happens on TikTok
Speaker 1: leaks into life offline. I spoke to a school police
Speaker 1: officer about this. I see it on TikTok, I see
Speaker 1: it in real life, and that's all across the world
Speaker 1: that that's happening. All kinds of challenges that go on
Speaker 1: that are awful. The duets are awful, right, some of
Speaker 1: the duets. You know, somebody has half a screen, the
Speaker 1: other person has half a screen, and the duets just
Speaker 1: makes our some awful uh sexualization of young kids, and
Speaker 1: and they're recording it for TikTok. That's Officer David Gomez.
Speaker 1: He's a school cop in Idaho. When he started nearly
Speaker 1: a decade ago, he thought he'd be spending most of
Speaker 1: his time breaking up fights, stopping school shootings, or keeping
Speaker 1: drugs out of bathrooms. But on the job, he noticed
Speaker 1: that kids social lives had moved beyond the hallways and
Speaker 1: parking lots, onto their phones and onto platforms like TikTok.
Speaker 1: I'll ask kids at my own school, Hey, how many
Speaker 1: people do you think who are juniors have sent out
Speaker 1: their nude photos? And you know the answer I get
Speaker 1: more and more is coomans. I think everybody has sent
Speaker 1: out their nude photo by eleventh grade, right, and by
Speaker 1: eighth grade it's about fifty. And that is a question
Speaker 1: I absolutely get a lot. Hey, is everybody's doing it?
Speaker 1: Why is it a big deal that I do it?
Speaker 1: While it seems that sending a sexy photo is kind
Speaker 1: of a write of passage for teenagers these days, it's
Speaker 1: a big deal to Officer Gomez because that naked photo
Speaker 1: could be used as blackmail, as a tool for predators
Speaker 1: to extore young children. He told me about a recent
Speaker 1: case he handled with one of his students. One of
Speaker 1: them again that started on TikTok, was a twenty four
Speaker 1: year old in Pennsylvania who was collecting girls to send
Speaker 1: him weekly naked pictures of themselves. One of the girls
Speaker 1: was a thirteen year old student at his school. Once
Speaker 1: he got their underwear picture and say, hey, look, if
Speaker 1: unless you want all your friends, your school, your grandparents
Speaker 1: send me. Now, you're gonna send me a video every
Speaker 1: week by this time, or else I'm gonna blast this
Speaker 1: to everybody. Officer Gomez says she sent the man in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania photos of herself because she felt she had no
Speaker 1: choice and was too scared to ask for help. Gomez
Speaker 1: has seen this a lot. They feel shamed, they feel embarrassed,
Speaker 1: you know, they feel out of control, they feel brainwashed.
Speaker 1: All those things are the same things that adult predators
Speaker 1: are using on young girls who are too much easier
Speaker 1: to control than an adult woman would be. Officer Gomez
Speaker 1: says he was able to get Pennsylvania State troopers to
Speaker 1: go to the guy's house and warn him to stop. Luckily,
Speaker 1: in this case, the guy stopped contacting the thirteen year old,
Speaker 1: but Gomez warns that her naked photos are all out
Speaker 1: there and other predators could buy them one day and
Speaker 1: try to extort her again. And do you think TikTok
Speaker 1: in particular has become a bigger problem in recent heres?
Speaker 1: Absolutely right, it has become the biggest problem above Snapchat.
Speaker 1: Now this was news to me when I first met
Speaker 1: Officer Gomez it was and I was working on a
Speaker 1: magazine story about TikTok. Back then. He told me that
Speaker 1: Snapchat was his main concern because of its disappearing messages.
Speaker 1: But in the past two years, from Officer Gomez's perspective,
Speaker 1: TikTok has overtaken Snapchat as the most dangerous app for kids.
Speaker 1: Oh really, why why above Snapchat? Because parents think that
Speaker 1: TikTok has some redeeming values of them making videos, and
Speaker 1: I would agree that it does have some redeeming values
Speaker 1: yea videos, lip syncing, singing, dancing around, oxide activity, Okay,
Speaker 1: I see that stuff. But parents are just not understanding
Speaker 1: how many predators are on TikTok. Parents underestimate TikTok because
Speaker 1: they don't see what their children see. Alex, do you you
Speaker 1: explain this back in people will have very personalized experience,
Speaker 1: see very very different contents basically on the age, based
Speaker 1: on the preference, So the parents experience will be completely different.
Speaker 1: With experience. Personalization means that a parent can't exactly monitor
Speaker 1: their child's feet and it means that they're not clued
Speaker 1: in into some of the big issues on TikTok. One
Speaker 1: of those problems is bullying. And it happens often, all
Speaker 1: the time, all the time, and it's definitely with like
Speaker 1: people who aren't conventionally pretty or even like just looks
Speaker 1: slightly different than like the average beauty standard. That's Liz,
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old from Florida. She didn't want us
Speaker 1: to use her last name. Lizays TikTok is worse than
Speaker 1: other social media apps. She uses them, always coming onto
Speaker 1: my life teams just like calling me names like oh,
Speaker 1: you're so ugly, you're so fat, you cow, and I'm like, okay, cool, thanks,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for the input. Bullying happens on
Speaker 1: our social media sites, but it can be more damaging
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the really young users on TikTok.
Speaker 1: And because TikTok is still so new compared to other companies,
Speaker 1: there are fewer people working on many of these safety issues.
Speaker 1: I spoke to a girl in the UK named Talia
Speaker 1: about this. She's thirteen and had a horrible experience on TikTok.
Speaker 1: I lost all my friends that I thought or baby
Speaker 1: enough for a long time and the best time because
Speaker 1: I felt alone a lot, so I felt like kind
Speaker 1: of trapped. That makes sense. It all began when Talia
Speaker 1: started getting a flurry of messages from her classmates. So
Speaker 1: I was doing online work and suddenly my phone got
Speaker 1: message saying did you do this to this girl? And
Speaker 1: I went, no, of course not, and then I got
Speaker 1: um six messages from the same kept going keept going,
Speaker 1: and I realized that I was her mom because the
Speaker 1: things I was getting said to me. And then Talier
Speaker 1: just came up to me and she said something's happened
Speaker 1: on TikTok and I was like, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: She she starts to explain it, and I'll just give
Speaker 1: me your phone. That's Talia's mom, Shelley deal. She says,
Speaker 1: someone online was pretending to be Talia. They set up
Speaker 1: an account with Talia's face and Talia's name with the
Speaker 1: sole purpose of trolling a popular girl at their middle school.
Speaker 1: It's what many tiktoker's call a hate account. So this
Speaker 1: person pretending to be Talia was calling this other girl
Speaker 1: really mean things, calling her a pig, fat, and ugly,
Speaker 1: and all of Talia's friends were confused why was Talia
Speaker 1: doing this? So then all of their classmates started to
Speaker 1: hit back at the real Talia, asking how she could
Speaker 1: have done such a thing. I had no proof they
Speaker 1: weren't me. I can't really do much because I thought
Speaker 1: I was really good friends to people, so people that
Speaker 1: messaging me, they just seemed so angry at me for
Speaker 1: something that I didn't do. Um. They were just saying
Speaker 1: that she's jealous, that she's a bit, she's a slag,
Speaker 1: just awful things. Talia's mom tried reaching out to TikTok.
Speaker 1: When she couldn't reach anyone, she reported the issues to
Speaker 1: the school, who sent her to the police, but the
Speaker 1: police said that TikTok refused to turn over any information.
Speaker 1: I'd already reported it to TikTok and said someone is
Speaker 1: pretending to be my daughter and didn't hear anything back. Um.
Speaker 1: But I was just shocked. And then the more the
Speaker 1: TikTok's were coming in, I just felt sick. I just
Speaker 1: felt physically sick. This was happening to her and we
Speaker 1: just didn't know who it was and why, and we
Speaker 1: couldn't stop it because I just thought I could report
Speaker 1: it to TikTok, they'd be taken down and that would
Speaker 1: be in for it. But they were It was a
Speaker 1: long time before they took it down. She said. The
Speaker 1: police officers told her this was a particularly bad case
Speaker 1: of online abuse, but they didn't have the resources to
Speaker 1: go after TikTok, even though cyber bullying is illegal in
Speaker 1: the UK. On TikTok, you can't speak to anyone. They
Speaker 1: don't reply. There's no response. I've given them chrome reference number. UM.
Speaker 1: I said, it's serious. The police are dealing with it.
Speaker 1: This is a brilliant You don't even get a response,
Speaker 1: they just ignore you. A few months after I spoke
Speaker 1: to Talia and her mom, TikTok finally did something about
Speaker 1: the incident because Talia's story appeared in the Daily Mail,
Speaker 1: and then TikTok banned the hate account for violating its guidelines.
Speaker 1: A TikTok spokesperson said, bullying and harassment are strictly against
Speaker 1: our community guidelines, and content of that sort is removed.
Speaker 1: But the hate accounts stayed up for eight months and
Speaker 1: this incident changed Talia's life to the point where her
Speaker 1: mom decided Talia should move schools. Obviously, Yeah, we've had
Speaker 1: times where she's just been sobbing and really down. You know,
Speaker 1: she's lost even her best friends that she's had since
Speaker 1: primary school. All turns against her. UM and it was
Speaker 1: actually her that said I could never go back to
Speaker 1: that school. I was surprised to find out that Talia
Speaker 1: stayed on TikTok. Her mom allows it because it's helped
Speaker 1: Tally a big friends at her new school tell you
Speaker 1: says that what happens still haunts her, but she's moving on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to find out who it is. But if not,
Speaker 1: I want to leave it behind and on Monday friends
Speaker 1: and just forget about what I'm trying. Don Hawkins, the
Speaker 1: child's safety advocate we heard from earlier, the one who
Speaker 1: had the eight year old relative. She thinks that problems
Speaker 1: like this shouldn't just be up to parents and the police.
Speaker 1: She wants TikTok to take a heavier hand and protecting
Speaker 1: its young users. Look, these tech companies know pretty much
Speaker 1: everything there is to know about us. They know us
Speaker 1: better than we know ourselves. They can detect age lying,
Speaker 1: They probably already have all of that information on us already.
Speaker 1: Don speculating here, But many tech experts I've spoken to
Speaker 1: agree with her that tech companies can do more to
Speaker 1: protect kids, but they don't because it would bite into
Speaker 1: add revenue. TikTok has made some strides and improving the
Speaker 1: safety of its app. The company barred kids under sixteen
Speaker 1: from sending messages and right after we contacted TikTok for
Speaker 1: comment about this episode. In January, they stopped users from
Speaker 1: being able to duet or download videos posted by kids
Speaker 1: under sixteen, and they stopped strangers from being able to
Speaker 1: comment on those videos. They also introduced a big change
Speaker 1: so that if you're under sixteen, your account is set
Speaker 1: to private by default. That means kids have to individually
Speaker 1: approve who gets to see their videos or deliberately changed
Speaker 1: their account to public. TikTok also released a statement. They
Speaker 1: wrote these changes are aimed at driving higher default standards
Speaker 1: for user privacy and safety, but Dawn says that it's
Speaker 1: clear that child safety still isn't TikTok's number one priority.
Speaker 1: She believes these problems emerged because TikTok became so successful
Speaker 1: so quickly. I do give TikTok the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: I think probably it was a problem of scaling and growing.
Speaker 1: I mean, their company explode it in growth across the world, um,
Speaker 1: and they just didn't they didn't prioritize child safety as
Speaker 1: they were growing. At this point, child's safety was turning
Speaker 1: into a disaster for TikTok and for Bye Dance. The CEO,
Speaker 1: John Gi Ming, just as he got his wish of
Speaker 1: taking TikTok worldwide and surpassing one billion registered users, suddenly
Speaker 1: all these problems started to emerge, child exploitation, cyber bullying.
Speaker 1: He gets slapped with the heftiest FTC fine of all
Speaker 1: time for violating child privacy laws. The UK and India
Speaker 1: launched their own investigations. You can't exactly go out and
Speaker 1: celebrate when everyone knows this is going on in your platform.
Speaker 1: I spoke to a number of people who worked with
Speaker 1: the Ming. They told me that he has an obsession
Speaker 1: with the technology side of his business, but he never
Speaker 1: really wants to wait into pr problems or government relations.
Speaker 1: He's a practical person and who often doesn't understand the
Speaker 1: emotional side of his business. He's often at a loss
Speaker 1: when it comes to dealing with people. That includes both
Speaker 1: his colleagues and the users on his apps. People said
Speaker 1: that Yuman believed he could get past the issues presented
Speaker 1: by the children on TikTok by programming his way around
Speaker 1: them for Bike Dance, based on the success of the
Speaker 1: products they already had in China. They were pretty confident
Speaker 1: that they will be able to expand beyond this very
Speaker 1: young demographic and make the app mainstream. That's where I mom,
Speaker 1: she's a former tech banker in China and Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: She's spent years following Byte Dance, TikTok's parent company. She
Speaker 1: says that by Dance may have felt confident about their
Speaker 1: ability to move past the FTC investigation because you Mean
Speaker 1: had been in hot water before. He had big run
Speaker 1: ins with regulators in China, where laws about child internet
Speaker 1: use are much stricter than in the US. So even
Speaker 1: before the US government was looking at TikTok for having
Speaker 1: underage users, by Dance had actually gone through a whole
Speaker 1: series of, you know, investigations with the Chinese government. Um.
Speaker 1: That's because the platform was accused of having inappropriate content.
Speaker 1: UM one of its actually first apps called They had Dwines,
Speaker 1: and it was a app that feature jokes and memes,
Speaker 1: and it was permanently banned um from the app stores
Speaker 1: by the Chinese government back in April two tho eighteen April,
Speaker 1: so a year before the FTC fine. Apparently Mean felt
Speaker 1: shaken by the Chinese government's actions. I think in some ways,
Speaker 1: you could call it existential, yeah, because like at that point,
Speaker 1: that was the harshest punishment that had been doled out,
Speaker 1: leading to Johnny Mean actually having to come out with
Speaker 1: a very public apology. Eming wrote a public letter that
Speaker 1: he posted on one of his social media accounts at
Speaker 1: four in the morning, apologizing to Chinese regulators, his users,
Speaker 1: and his employees. I asked my colleague to read a
Speaker 1: version that was translated by the China Media Project. I've
Speaker 1: been filled with remorse and guilt, entirely unable to sleep.
Speaker 1: Our product took the wrong path, and I'm personally responsible
Speaker 1: for the punishments we've received. We placed excessive emphasis on
Speaker 1: the role of technology, and we have not acknowledged that
Speaker 1: technology must be led by the socialist core value system
Speaker 1: broadcasting positive energy. At the time, some media analysts speculate
Speaker 1: this letter was Human's way of saying that he would
Speaker 1: fall in line with the Chinese government's demands, and he did.
Speaker 1: You Mean created several child safety features for his Chinese users.
Speaker 1: Kids were blocked from the Chinese version of TikTok from
Speaker 1: ten pm until six am, and he used facial recognition
Speaker 1: to predict their ages. But these changes were made in China,
Speaker 1: and you mean realized that he still needed to make
Speaker 1: some big changes at TikTok globally, and that would start
Speaker 1: with a shake up and leadership. You mean wanted to
Speaker 1: put someone else in charge of TikTok, someone who could
Speaker 1: hand all the complexities of government investigations, someone who could
Speaker 1: talk with officials around the world, someone who could speak
Speaker 1: English well. So you mean made a surprising move. He
Speaker 1: decided to hand over the reins of TikTok back to
Speaker 1: Alex jew At that point, Alex was still on a
Speaker 1: sabbatical of sorts, roaming around and listening to jazz music.
Speaker 1: Even calls Alex up and asks him to come back
Speaker 1: to work. He wanted Alex to deal with their preteen users,
Speaker 1: repaired TikTok's reputation after the FTC fine, and fly to
Speaker 1: the US to set things straight with government officials. And
Speaker 1: it's not just that Eming asks Alex back because he
Speaker 1: suddenly gained a conscience and wanted to protect kids. Multiple
Speaker 1: people have told me that Evening actually blamed Alex for
Speaker 1: creating the problem in the first place. After all, it
Speaker 1: was Alex who appeared to ignore the issues of having
Speaker 1: so many young users on the app for years, so
Speaker 1: you mean wanted Alex to clean up the mess. But
Speaker 1: soon after Alex came back to TikTok, he find out
Speaker 1: that TikTok's young users were just the start of his problems.
Speaker 1: He would find TikTok in the crosshairs of u S
Speaker 1: lawmakers and the president. Politicians wanted to know where all
Speaker 1: this American data was going and what exactly was by
Speaker 1: Dance's relationship with the Chinese government. That's next time on Foundering.
Speaker 1: Foundering is hosted by me Shelley Banjo. Sean Wyn is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Raymondo is our audio engineer. Molly Nugent
Speaker 1: is our associate producer. Additional reporting by Isabel Lee. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jeping Huang, Edwin Chan, Josh Brustin, and Doors
Speaker 1: Schloton's class at Portola High School in Irvine, California. Her
Speaker 1: students gave us so many great insights on what it's
Speaker 1: like to be a teenager on TikTok. Our story editors
Speaker 1: are Mark Billion and Vander May and Alistair Barr. Francesca
Speaker 1: Levi is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Shared a subscribe
Speaker 1: and if you like our show, leave a review. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: tell your friends see you next time.