TikTok's U.S. unit, TikTok USDS Joint Venture, has joined Lantern, a cross-platform child safety program. The move comes eight months after the U.S. unit was spun out of TikTok.
Lantern, established in 2023, enables social media companies to collaborate by securely sharing signals of harmful content and behavior, aiming to identify bad actors across different platforms. Other members of the program include Google, X, Snap, Twitch, Anthropic, Meta, Discord, Microsoft, Apple, Roblox, and Reddit.
Marc Leone, Lantern's director, stated that TikTok USDS JV's participation will help strengthen coordinated enforcement against child sexual exploitation and abuse across the wider tech ecosystem. Lantern reports that participant companies shared over 2 million signals of potentially violating behavior through 2025.
In addition to joining Lantern, TikTok's U.S. venture is committing $2 million to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to modernize its CyberTipline. This investment is intended to help NCMEC deploy advanced tools to detect harm sooner, reduce manual processing times, and accelerate reports to law enforcement.
The NCMEC project is expected to cost $10 million over three years, with contributions from partners including AWS, Microsoft, and Palantir.