Ms Chloe Setter:

Age assurance, or age verification, is a very complex and sensitive issue that requires a multifaceted, holistic approach. I can talk through how we at TikTok try to tackle the issue of underage users. We see it as an ongoing process that begins at the start, namely, at the point of download. If the device’s account settings, whether on the phone, iPad or whatever, are correct, technically an under-13 should not be able to download the app in the first instance. We recognise, however, that that is not always the case, so the next phase we have is a neutral age gate.

By “neutral”, I mean it does not give any information about what age you need to put in and it just requires a date of birth. Again, we recognise that not everyone is truthful and young people try to find ways to circumnavigate the systems, so that is why the second phase is the detection to try to find these accounts which we believe to be held by those under 13. All of our moderators are trained to look for this and to flag and suspend those accounts if they see them. We receive a lot of reports from parents telling us they think their child is on the app and should not be, and users can report in the app itself. We also use technology to look at keywords, bios and different information to help surface those accounts. We take a safety first approach, so if there is any uncertainty, we always suspend the account and the onus is then on the user to verify their age using a variety of methods like ID, credit card, facial age estimation and so on.

It is a challenge the industry faces. To give the committee a sense of the effort we are putting in, we remove on average 20 million suspected underage accounts every quarter globally, so we are removing a lot of these accounts and trying to make sure that we get them off the platform as soon as possible. We do not want to have under-13s on the platform, which is designed for those aged 13 and upwards.

There is currently no agreed best practice or position on age assurance as to what "good" looks like. It is something that is very much in the minds of regulators, and we are meeting with regulators across Europe and the world on this topic pretty regularly. There are also standards being developed in this space by the ISO to look at what best practice looks like and what competence levels apply. It is very much an evolving space so we are very much in the mode of listening, assessing and trying to make sure we have the best current approach for now, but also looking at what we can do in future.