A month after US authorities ordered popular video-sharing app TikTok to reveal how its practices affect children, the platform itself has tightened its privacy policies for users under 18. Specifically, the accounts of users aged 13-15 will now be private by default.
This means that only those who the user approves as a follower will be able to see the videos of the user in question, which was not the case before. In any case, this setting will be set to public.
Older teens won't see this default change. For users aged 16 and 17, the default setting to allow people to download their videos will be set to 'off' instead of 'on'.
TikTok also newly blocks the ability for users to download videos created by users aged 15 and under. This age group will also be restricted from direct messaging and will not be able to host live streams.
In December last year, the US Federal Trade Commission asked TikTok's parent company ByteDance, along with other social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Amazon, to provide it with detailed informace about how they collect and use users' personal data and how their related practices affect children and youth.
TikTok, which is most popular among children and young people, currently has around a billion monthly active users.
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