'Regulators in the Netherlands must now intervene at TikTok'

Dutch and European regulators now have to intervene with the video app TikTok to guarantee the safety of users. That is the view of the Foundation for Market Information Research (SOMI). 

This article was published on 28th January 2021 on Trouw in the Netherlands. Please find the English translation below.

For example, the age verification of 13 years old would be easy to circumvent. Child predators are also said to look for victims via the social medium.

The Chinese app is extremely popular with young people. “A recent survey by research agency Multiscope shows that the use of TikTok in the Netherlands among 12-year-olds is highest at 64 percent,” says Cor Wijtvliet, co-founder of SOMI. Children under the age of 16 require parental consent for an account.

The Italian privacy watchdog has urged TikTok to ban all users whose age it cannot verify. That decision followed the death of a 10-year-old Italian girl who used the app a lot. According to her parents, she died after participating in a 'blackout challenge' in which people let themselves suffocate for as long as possible while filming themselves. “Besides the many perilous challenges, TikTok is a paradise for predators,” says SOMI. "We are waiting for a serious incident here in the Netherlands."

Recently, researcher Apptopia reported that TikTok would be the most downloaded app of 2020 worldwide. At least 850 million people have put the app on their phone or tablet, according to the figures. TikTok has also been under heavy fire in the United States for months. Trump argued that TikTok is storing too much data, which would end up with the Chinese government through parent company ByteDance.

The then-president demanded that TikTok's US operations be sold to an American party, otherwise the app would be banned in the US. In September, Trump agreed to a plan by Oracle and Walmart that would transfer TikTok's US operations into a new company. But TikTok continued to - for the time being - successfully opposing the US government interference.