London (AFP)
TikTok wants to coordinate with nine other social media giants to quickly identify and remove ultra-violent images, including suicide images, from platforms, the Chinese firm announced Tuesday during a hearing in front of the British Parliament.
Theo Bertram, head of TikTok responsible for relations with authorities in Europe, explained that the company made the proposal to directors of Facebook, Instagram, Google, Youtube, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit in a letter sent after the broadcast on several networks of a video of a man committing suicide.
For now, each platform has its own policy to stop the distribution of problematic content.
But "our individual efforts to protect our users would be greatly enhanced by a collaborative approach to identify extremely violent content, such as suicide, early on and notify other industry representatives," Vanessa Pappas, Acting CEO of TikTok.
The Chinese firm launched its own investigation after the filmed suicide of an American found itself amid other videos posted on its platform, which is particularly popular with young adolescents.
According to the warning sent by TikTok to its users on September 8, these images were originally from a Facebook live.
The video was then posted on several other platforms, after a "coordinated attack" by people operating on the dark web, a hidden part of the internet, Theo Bertram told British MPs on Tuesday.
"In this case, our thoughts are with the victim. But we believe that things could be better in the future", indicated this former adviser to the British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
"We must now establish a partnership to deal with this type of content", he declared during his hearing before a parliamentary committee, explaining that this collaboration could be inspired by that already in place to fight against content showing sexual abuse of children.
In its letter to other social media giants, TikTok proposed that security officials from each app meet to work out the details of a collective approach, "which we believe will help us all improve the security of our users ".
© 2020 AFP