Abstract:
TikTok USDS Joint Venture, the U.S. business unit of TikTok, recently announced that it has joined Lantern, a cross-platform child safety project jointly participated by multiple technology companies. The project aims to enable risk signals related to harmful behavior and content to be securely shared between different Internet platforms in order to identify malicious users who may transfer activity between different platforms, thereby strengthening joint efforts to combat risks such as child sexual exploitation and abuse.
TikTok USDS Joint Venture joined Lantern about 8 months after its establishment. This entity is a U.S. joint venture established after the reorganization of TikTok's U.S. business in early 2026. It is responsible for TikTok's data protection, algorithm security, content review, and software security in the U.S. market. Under the new structure, non-Chinese investors will hold about 80% of the U.S. business, with ByteDance retaining less than 20%.
Lantern was originally launched in 2023 and was initiated by technology industry organizations. The core idea is to allow participating companies to share "signals" about violations while protecting user privacy. These signals do not mean that the platform directly shares all personal information of users, but are used to help other participating platforms identify possible child safety risks. When an actor with relevant risks moves from one platform to another, other platforms can use this information to conduct further investigations and take measures according to their own rules.
Companies currently participating in Lantern include Google, X, Snap, Twitch, Anthropic, Meta, Discord, Microsoft, Apple, Roblox and Reddit. The addition of TikTok's US business will further expand this cross-platform children's safety network.
Lantern stated that cross-platform cooperation is crucial to identifying and preventing child sexual exploitation and abuse activities, and the addition of TikTok USDS Joint Venture will help strengthen coordinated law enforcement across the entire technology industry.
Data released by Lantern shows that as of the end of 2025, companies participating in the program have shared more than 2 million potential violation signals. This information can help different platforms take action faster when relevant risks are discovered, rather than allowing malicious actors to circumvent the security mechanisms of a single platform by constantly switching platforms.
TikTok’s U.S. operations have previously reported child sexual abuse materials and other threats to child safety to CyberTipline operated by the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in accordance with the law. In addition to joining Lantern this time, TikTok USDS Joint Venture also announced an investment of US$2 million in NCMEC to upgrade the CyberTipline system.
This funding will be used to develop more advanced search, automation and analysis tools to help NCMEC detect potentially harmful incidents earlier and reduce the time required to manually process reports. TikTok said one of the goals of these technology upgrades is to cut manual processing time in half while speeding up the submission of actionable reports to law enforcement.
NCMEC’s CyberTipline modernization project is expected to last three years, with a total investment of approximately US$10 million. In addition to TikTok, companies such as Amazon Cloud Service AWS, Microsoft and Palantir will also provide financial, technical or other resource support for the project.
For TikTok, joining Lantern this time also has a special background. TikTok’s U.S. business has long faced regulatory pressure on children’s safety, privacy protection, and content review. In early 2026, after TikTok completed the adjustment of its new joint venture structure in the United States, the U.S. business assumed more independent responsibilities in terms of data protection, algorithm security, and content review. Thereafter, the U.S. entity will also need to directly assume corresponding safety and compliance responsibilities under the U.S. regulatory framework.
In August this year, TikTok and its parent company Bytedance also reached a $400 million settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve charges raised by the U.S. government regarding the protection of children’s online privacy. The U.S. Department of Justice previously accused TikTok of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by allowing a large number of children under the age of 13 to use the platform and collecting relevant personal information without parental consent. The settlement also includes measures to strengthen protections for younger users.
Therefore, TikTok USDS Joint Venture’s joining Lantern and investing funds in NCMEC can be seen as part of its efforts to further strengthen the child safety system in the US market. However, Lantern itself is not a regulatory system directly operated by the government, but an industry collaboration mechanism in which technology companies participate. Each participating company still needs to decide how to use shared risk information and whether to take enforcement measures based on its own platform rules and applicable laws.
As social platforms, instant messaging services and other Internet products become more and more closely connected, the way individual platforms rely on their own systems to identify children's safety risks is also facing new challenges. Malicious actors may move to another platform to continue their activities after being restricted on one platform, so Lantern hopes to reduce this "change platform and start over" situation by sharing risk signals across platforms.
The addition of TikTok’s U.S. business means that the current children’s safety information collaboration network among major U.S. Internet platforms has further expanded. In the future, as more platforms join and organizations such as NCMEC continue to upgrade relevant infrastructure, this cross-platform risk identification and information sharing mechanism may become an important part of how Internet companies deal with child sexual exploitation, abuse, and other child safety threats.
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