The Chinese social network TikTok announced on Monday “significant changes” to the platform experience under the Digital Services Law (DAS), focused on increasing the transparency and security of content.
In a statement, the platform states that, being considered a ‘Very Large Online Platform’ (VLOP), it has implemented “significant changes to the TikTok experience under the DAS”, which include “new processes and features designed to further increase the transparency”. of the focus in areas such as advertising, content moderation and recommender systems.
“We also created a new compliance function to guarantee that we continue to respond to the significant commitments resulting from this new law, which is anticipated as a historical framework in the field of content security” and whose “significant responsibilities” to the platform says to assume “from from today”.
As he stresses, in the last 12 months there have been “more than a thousand [as] people from different teams across the company [que] worked with a focus on preparing to comply with this legislation from the 1st”.
In addition, TikTok says that it is “working on a ‘European Online Safety Center’, which will be available in 23 European languages and will serve as a ‘one stop shop'” through which the TikTok community will be able to “better understand “how the platform is doing in compliance with the DSA and what that means in regards to the user experience.
On the occasion, this Monday, of the official “Day 1” of the platform under the DAS, TikTok highlights among the main changes introduced the denunciation of illegal content, the popular ‘feed’, the Commercial Content Library, the research access of the platform, the classification of commercial content and the limitation of personalized ads for children under 18 years of age.
According to the details, the additional reporting option allows people to report content (including advertising) that they consider to be illegal in the European Economic Area, and any reported content will be reviewed under the app’s ‘Community Guidelines’ and “removed globally if found.” finds”. be a violation of TikTok’s policies.”
“Otherwise, the new team of moderators and legal experts will assess whether the content violates local law and access to that content will be restricted in that country,” and “both the person who posted the content and the person who reported it will be informed”. of the decision and the reasons for it, with the possibility of appealing if they do not agree”.
Regarding the popular feed, TikTok will, among other things, allow users in Europe to turn off personalization so that the “For You” and “Live” feeds will recommend videos that are locally relevant and popular around the world, in place content based on your personal profile. interests.
In turn, the Commercial Content Library consists of a searchable database with information about paid ads on TikTok and ad metadata, such as the ad creative, the dates the ad was served, and the main parameters used to the segmentation.
Aiming to “give more transparency to TikTok content,” the app also says it opened, in early August, applications for European academics who want to investigate the platform and “clarify the global TikTok community about the content.” of a commercial nature”, affirms the platform that now offers “a wider range of labels that individuals and companies can use to classify their content”.
TikTok already implemented the limitation of personalized ads for children under 18 in July, and users in Europe between the ages of 13 and 17 no longer see personalized advertising based on their activities on or off the platform.
Finally, and also in accordance with the DSA guidelines, TikTok advances that “soon it will publish the first transparency report, which will include a breakdown of the number of monthly active users in each member country of the European Union and more information about our moderation of contents”. activities”.
Source: TSF
