Social Media: After Influencers, TikTok Representatives Attempt to Reassure MPs

They sought to be reassuring. Several TikTok representatives defended the functioning of the social network, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, in the National Assembly on Thursday before the commission of inquiry tasked with assessing the psychological effects of the platform on minors.

The latter emphasized the moderation policy and the experience of 13- to 17-year-olds, despite the numerous abuses highlighted by experts and politicians in recent months. The group indicated that it employs 509 French-speaking moderators and claims to proactively moderate 98% of content that violates its terms of use.

"We're using artificial intelligence a lot to accelerate our ability to remove problematic content," insisted Brie Pegum, head of regulation at TikTok, which has more than 25 million users in France. Faced with sexist content or content that encourages anorexia, she acknowledged that "errors" were "inevitable" and that users "are very creative, including in how they circumvent the rules." "But it's our team's responsibility to anticipate these circumventions," she added.

Asked about the presence of minors declaring themselves adults, Arnaud Cabanis, head of sales for France and Benelux, stated that checks, particularly using facial recognition, were carried out when there were suspicions of fraud detected by TikTok's algorithm. While acknowledging that "it's not an exact science" and that the presence of minors not declared as such "is technically possible."

Although TikTok theoretically prohibits those under 13 from registering, nearly one in two children aged 11-12 are on the site, according to statistics from Arcom, the French digital regulator. Regarding the launch in France at the end of March of TikTok Shop, which allows users to purchase products directly within the app, officials reiterated that this option was not open to those under 18 and that the app does not allow advertising targeting minors, in accordance with the European regulation that came into force last year.

Returning to the heated hearing on Tuesday of five influencers deemed problematic, which saw the premature departure of one of them (Alex Hitchens, whose real name is Isac Mayembo), the president of the Commission, the socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte, "regretted the attitude" of some, "who lacked respect for national representation."

The parliamentarians, who heard from more than a hundred experts and stakeholders in the sector and conducted a public consultation that received more than 30,000 responses, are due to submit their report in September.