TikTok has proposed a global coalition of social media firms for early identification and removal of harmful content, the company said on Tuesday, as networking apps face a barrage of criticism over issues ranging from misinformation to data privacy.
BYTEDANCE HAS BEEN RACING TO AVOID A CRACKDOWN ON TIKTOK
The company, owned by China’s ByteDance and at the center of a political battle between Washington and Beijing, said it had sent letters to nine companies for a memorandum of understanding on content moderation.
The app, a relative newcomer to the social media landscape, has had fewer instances of wrestling publicly with the persistent content moderation scandals that have dogged larger and more entrenched competitors like Facebook Inc FB.O and Twitter.
The company said on Tuesday it got 1,768 requests for user data, with 290, or 16.4%, of those from U.S. law enforcement agencies.
ByteDance has been racing to avoid a crackdown on TikTok after being at loggerheads with the U.S. government. U.S. officials have expressed concerns that personal data of as many as 100 million Americans that use the app is being passed on to China’s Communist Party government.