TikTok USDS Joint Venture joins Lantern child safety initiative

TikTok USDS Joint Venture has joined Lantern, a cross-platform child safety initiative composed of major technology companies. The program, launched in 2023, enables companies to securely share signals regarding harmful behavior and content to identify bad actors moving across different platforms. Existing members include Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Snap, and Reddit, among others.

In addition to joining the initiative, TikTok’s U.S. unit is committing $2 million to help the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) modernize its CyberTipline. This investment is part of a larger $10 million, three-year project involving partners such as AWS, Microsoft, and Palantir. The funding aims to implement advanced search, automation, and analysis tools to improve the detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and accelerate reports to law enforcement.