Ms Susan Moss:

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. I thank the members of the committee for this invitation to speak to them and contribute to this important discussion. I am head of public policy at TikTok in Ireland. I am joined by my colleague, Dr. Nikki Suu, safety and well-being public policy subject expert.

In my opening statement, I will provide the committee with a short overview of TikTok’s commitment to online trust and safety and ongoing response to disinformation.

By way of background, we first invested in Ireland in 2019 and we continue to grow our presence and operations here, with over 3,000 employees in diverse roles, including data privacy and TikTok's trust and safety team. TikTok is a platform where people can find content that entertains them, educates and provides a safe space for people to express their true self, whether that is reading through BookTok or bringing Irish music to a global audience through #Fleadh.

With a large and diverse community comes a responsibility to provide a safe and trustworthy environment. TikTok’s approach, first and foremost, is safety as a design rather than safety as a bolt-on. We do this in a number of ways, including third-party engagement with our European safety advisory council, bringing together leaders from academia and civil society.

Our community guidelines reflect our values and establish the kind of behaviour we expect on our platform. TikTok proactively seeks out and removes content which violates these guidelines. We enforce these rules using a combination of technology and our safety experts around the world. In order to support fair and consistent review of potentially violative content, moderators work alongside our automated moderation systems and take into account additional context and nuance which may not always be picked up by technology.

We believe in transparency. For this reason, we publish a quarterly transparency report as well as our reporting obligations under the EU Digital Services Act and the EU code of practice on disinformation.

TikTok is a platform for users aged 13 and above. We have processes in place to enforce our minimum age requirements, both at the point of sign-up and through the continuous proactive removal of suspected underage accounts from our platform.

Many of our safety features designed with teenagers in mind are a first for the social media industry. For example, when a teenager under 16 joins TikTok their account will be set to private by default and their ability to direct message is disabled. TikTok also has a 60-minute screen time limit as a default for under-18s. We also provide a suite of family pairing tools so parents and guardians can participate in their teen's experience and make choices that are right for their families and reflect their appropriate developmental needs.

On disinformation and media literacy, disinformation is not a new problem but the Internet provides a new avenue to an old challenge. We treat disinformation with the utmost seriousness and are committed to preventing its spread, while elevating authoritative information and investing in media literacy to help build resilience in our community. We place considerable emphasis on proactive content moderation and the vast majority of violative content is identified and removed proactively before it ever receives a single view on TikTok or is reported to us. As part of the Digital Services Act compliance programme, under which the code of the practice on disinformation will find a new legislative home, we have implemented a range of measures designed to keep our users safe across a number of key areas, including disinformation.

We welcome the opportunity to engage with the committee and I am happy to answer any questions members may have.