An investigation by the human rights group Global Witness claims that TikTok’s algorithm is recommending sexually explicit content to children, even after minor accounts are created with all the safety features activated.
TikTok’s minimum user age is 13. The BBC reports that the researchers set up four fake accounts pretending to be 13-year-olds and turned on “Restricted Mode,” the setting parents are relying on to filter out content with mature themes like anything sexually suggestive or content that’s just flat out pornography.
Instead, TikTok’s “You May Like” section started pumping out search suggestions that led straight to a menagerie of NSFW content: simulated masturbation; public flashing; and, of course, good old-fashioned, full-blown pornography.
Here’s the wildest part: the accounts hadn’t searched for anything yet. Human input did not shape and bend the TikTok algorithm toward porn. TikTok was feeding these “teenage” accounts porn entirely unprompted, almost as a default. It feels like the “teens” were being served a platter of the best content TikTok has to offer to get them started, and porn took up a lot of real estate in that welcome basket.
These explicit videos were often buried inside otherwise “innocent” clips, the report claims, cleverly bypassing TikTok’s content moderation systems. Global Witness first flagged the issue in April. TikTok claimed it fixed it. Then, in late July, after the UK’s Online Safety Act’s Children’s Codes became law, the group ran the experiment again. Same results.
The Children’s Codes legally require platforms to implement “highly effective age assurance” and proactively filter out porn, self-harm, and other inappropriate content that should be served up to children on an algorithmic silver platter.
TikTok says it’s got over 50 safety features, and that it removes every 9 out of 10 that violate its content rules before anyone even sees them. If that much porn is being instantly tossed at people the second they make accounts, before they even search for anything, then the sheer volume of pornography TikTok users are feeding the algorithm must be astounding.
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