An Update from TikTok

Republished from https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/update-on-protect-wildlife-online. Visit TikTok’s newsroom page for full video features.

Ayse Koçak, Policy Manager, Illegal Activities & Regulated Goods

Earlier this year, we were thrilled to join the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. Established in 2018 by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), TRAFFIC and IFAW, the Coalition brings together e-commerce, search, and social platforms across the world to prevent wildlife trafficking online. Collaboration with partner organisations is critical when it comes to informing, shaping and strengthening our approach to safety, and today we would like to provide an update on how we're continuing our work to protect wildlife.

To raise awareness among our community about the dangers of trading endangered species online, we will soon introduce two Public Service Announcements (PSA) that will be visible to people whenever they search for specific wildlife-related content or hashtags. We use PSAs to inform our community about certain issues and redirect them towards authoritative content.

World Sea Turtle Day

We're announcing these updates to coincide with World Sea Turtle Day. Over the last two centuries these epic mariners have been pushed to the brink by human activity. Habitat-loss, poaching and commercial fishing have wrought havoc on these beautiful creatures - today, six of the seven species are threatened with extinction. Trading sea turtle species or their products is prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) - yet criminal exploitation and illegal trafficking persists. The internet has also brought new avenues for criminals to exploit and traffic wildlife, which is why we're working with the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online to introduce these changes.

Environmental champions and wildlife campaigners are working each day to save these magnificent animals. It's our hope that by implementing these changes, we can play our small part in ending their exploitation by criminal gangs and opportunists. TikTok is home to thousands of creators who are passionate about protecting the natural environment, celebrating the wildlife that we share this planet with, and sharing their stories with our community along the way.

To date, there has been over 360 million views of content labelled #Conservation and over 165 million views of specific #SeaTurtle content. Some of TikTok's top creators in this area include Marine Biologist @carissaandclimate and National Geographic's TV Vet Paul Ramos (@vetpaulramos).

Dr Paul Ramos, Veterinarian (@vetpaulramos) said:

"Wildlife around the world is under threat from human activity, including climate change, habitat loss and illegal trafficking. Saving our most beloved creatures is a complicated undertaking - but we can all help protect the natural world. I've seen how deeply the TikTok community cares about our planet and the creatures we share it with, and social media users have an important role to play in protecting wildlife online. I'm asking them to continue playing their part, whether that be reporting suspicious content, spreading awareness online or learning about the dangers of posing for photographs with exotic or endangered animals such as tigers or elephants."

Carissa Cabrera, Marine Biologist (@carissaandclimate) said:

"Our oceans and wildlife that call it home are under extreme pressure from the climate crisis, overfishing, and pollution. Illegal trafficking of wildlife, including their eggs and babies, are leading threats to survival for species like sea turtles. Throughout the world, even in my home of Hawai'i, wildlife trafficking is a growing problem. The internet can be a huge benefit for conservation efforts, but also brings new ways for traffickers to exploit our oceans. That's why it's so important that social media users report any suspicious content that they see online. I've witnessed the passion that the TikTok community has for the natural world, and I'm confident they will continue doing their part to protect our planet."

Our progress on tackling wildlife trafficking online

Our Community Guidelines make it clear that any content that depicts or promotes the poaching or illegal trade of wildlife is not allowed on our platform and will be removed when identified. Since joining the Coalition in March 2021, our teams have removed 73.5% of this kind of content before it received a single view. Our Advertising Policies also make it clear that we prohibit the advertising of products derived from protected animals or the sale of animals themselves.

Giavanna Grein, Senior Program Officer, TRAFFIC at WWF said:

“TikTok’s PSAs will help users better understand the link between wildlife content shared on the platform and the illegal wildlife trade, and empower them to help report suspicious content. Educating the public on this connection is an important step towards reducing wildlife trafficking across online platforms.”

We're excited to continue working with the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online to protect some of our planet's most endangered animals and keep our community safe from harm. We're confident that this work will help TikTok remain a platform that brings joy and inspires creativity.

Huya Joins the Coalition

Beijing, China, 5th June 2021 - On World Environment Day, video game company Huya announces it is joining the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. Huya hopes to crackdown on the spread of harmful content related to wildlife through technical means and effective platform content checking.

The Coalition, convened by TRAFFIC, WWF and IFAW, aims to unite global technology companies to combat the illegal trade of endangered species and their products online. Since 2018, 41 technology companies, including Alibaba, Tencent, Google and Facebook, have joined the Coalition.

"Internet companies play an important role in combating the illegal wildlife trade globally," said Xu Ling, Director of TRAFFIC China. “As a leading live streaming platform, Huya's participation adds new strength to the Coalition. We also hope Huya's efforts will help more people, especially the young, increase awareness on wildlife conservation and refusing the illegal wildlife trade."

To enhance the risk control ability on the platform, Huya held a special training in collaboration with TRAFFIC, to raise their employees’ awareness of illegal wildlife trade. Experts trained more than 1,000 people on Huya’s security team on Wild Animal Protection Laws and the identification of commonly traded wild animal products.

“We are delighted to join the Coalition on the special occasion of World Environment Day. We will work with our industry partners to fight the illegal trade of wildlife online and protect nature. In the future, we will continue to regulate the daily stream content of anchors through the platform, actively disseminate wildlife protection messages to our anchors and viewers, and popularize relevant knowledge, contributing to the protection of the earth environment." - Li Meng, Senior Vice President of Huya

Huya, which offers live streaming to its users, intends to clamp down on illegal wildlife trade by using image and voice recognition to flag issues in real-time and remove them from its platform. Huya also intends to further develop AI identification models for wildlife based on the rich wildlife sample database of the Coalition and improve the accuracy of wildlife identification. In addition, Huya will support law enforcement authorities to combat offline illegal hunting and trading of wild animals and plants.

In response to the growing demand for live-streamed information, in April 2020, Huya and the Chinese Sturgeon Research Institute held a live stream where more than one million viewers witnessed the moment when the Chinese sturgeon returned to the Yangtze River. Due to its success, Huya plans to launch more popular science programs related to wildlife protection.

Welcome Douyin to the Coalition

22th April, 2021, Beijing Douyin, one of the most popular short video social media platforms in China, joined the Coalition today on Earth Day.

Douyin is committed to strengthening platform regulations to crack down on and prevent illegal wildlife trade. With support from Coalition conveners, Douyin has optimized their reporting mechanism related to wildlife, and set up a special working group for animal and plant protection. Based on the reporting mechanism, once a video has been verified as violating wildlife related policies, the dissemination of the video will be blocked, and content of intelligence value will be reported to relevant law enforcement departments.  

According to the Director of Douyin Risk Control and Information Security department, Douyin will continue to crack down on online wildlife trafficking and illegal information through technological innovation, including more actions on content review and search algorithm optimization.  

 Chenyue Ma, Senior Program Officer of IFAW, said, "The ever-changing and advancing internet technology has made detection and tackling of illegal wildlife trade online increasingly challenging. As one of the most popular short video platforms, Douyin’s effort in combating wildlife cybercrime will bring significant impact in reducing market accessibility. And we hope that 600 million Douyin users will become champions for wildlife conservation to help end online wildlife trafficking. "

In addition to strengthening platform regulation, Douyin is also cooperating with IFAW in developing a tool which utilizes machine learning and big data technology in identification of wildlife products and live animals in short videos. Once a video is identified by the tool as containing illegal content, the video will be removed or blocked. The tool is at final stage of testing and will be released in June to safeguard endangered wildlife.

Jing Chen, Senior Programme Manager of TRAFFIC China warmly welcomed Douyin’s joining of the Coalition, and is committed to continuing to support Douyin to combat illegal trade in both wild fauna and flora on their platform by regularly sharing IWT monitoring results and providing capacity building for their security management staff. TRAFFIC also worked closely with Douyin to deliver a Social Behaviour Change (SBC) training workshop on 25 March 2021, which aimed to support Chinese government officials and industry partners to use the SBC toolkit (http://www.trafficchina.org/sbc) to design targeted demand reduction campaigns for wild meat consumption in China.

A key point to solve the problem of illegal wildlife trade online is continuously improving the public's legal awareness. Manager of Douyin Corporate Social Responsibility department said that, “As one of the most popular social media platforms in China, Douyin will work closely with NGOs to call on millions of Douyin users to actively participate in illegal content reporting and wildlife conservation message promotion in the future, leaving no room for online illegal wildlife trade.”

About Douyin

Douyin is the most popular short video social platform in China, which was launched on September, 2016. In August 2020, the daily users on the platform reached 600 million.

Official website: www.douyin.com/

TikTok Joins the Coalition

At TikTok, our aim is to maintain a supportive environment that enables our community to focus on what matters to them; being creative, finding community, and having fun. We work around the clock to maintain this environment by developing policies to help tackle emerging risks, and we focus on building pioneering safety features.

One essential part of our efforts is collaboration with partner organisations to inform, shape and strengthen our approach to safety. Today, we are pleased to announce that TikTok has joined the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. Established in 2018 by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), TRAFFIC and IFAW, the Coalition brings together e-commerce, search, and social platforms across the world to reduce wildlife trafficking online.

New Facebook User Alert

New Facebook alert informs users about wildlife trafficking

Since 2016, Facebook and WWF have been working together to address wildlife trafficking by detecting and removing illicit activity that fuels the trade in wildlife and its products on one of the largest social media platforms in the world. As part of this effort, Facebook has launched a new pop-up interstitial alert message that informs users about illegal wildlife trade when certain wildlife-related search words are entered.