TikTok announces new privacy measures for teenagers, restricting visibility and notifications
TikTok announced new measures to protect the privacy of teenagers on its platform. This super-popular short video sharing app puts many restrictions on the TikTok experience for minors between 13 and 17 years old.
First, TikTok will disable direct messaging (DM) by default for 16-year-old and 17-year-old users who join the platform for the first time. They must manually open the DM, where they can choose who can send them messages. Existing users of this age who have not used DM before will also be notified the next time they use it, check their message settings. TikTok has disabled messaging for teenagers under the age of 16.
TikTok also disabled Duet and Stitch feature for users between 13 and 15 years old. In the future, the visibility of their videos will be set to private by default. Before sharing, they must decide who can see their videos on TikTok. They can choose between friends and followers. For users in this age group, the “Everyone” option is turned off. They cannot publish their first video before making a choice.
Next, we also restricted who can download public videos of minors. TikTok no longer allows anyone to download videos of users under the age of 16. For 16 and 17-year-old users, this feature is also turned off by default. If they choose to open the download, the app will display a pop-up window about how the download works in context.
Others can be able to download your video and share the downloaded content on other platforms,” the pop-up window reads. The user needs to confirm their choice to enable the download.
