Eight months after it was separated from its parent company, TikTok, the U.S. branch of the app—known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture—has joined Lantern, a collaborative child safety initiative involving major tech companies. Lantern, launched in 2023, brings together social media platforms to share information about harmful behaviors and content across different platforms. This helps identify and stop individuals who may pose a threat to children as they move from one service to another. Major tech firms like Google, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft are part of the program, highlighting its significance in the digital space. Lantern’s director, Marc Leone, stated that cross-platform collaboration is vital in addressing issues like child sexual exploitation and abuse. By joining Lantern, TikTok US aligns itself with its competitors, many of whom are already part of the initiative. According to Lantern, participating companies have shared over 2 million signals of potentially harmful behavior since 2023. These signals help identify content or users that could violate community guidelines or pose a risk to children. TikTok US has already been legally required to report instances of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other threats to children’s safety to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) via its CyberTipline. Now, the company is taking an additional step by investing $2 million to help NCMEC modernize its operations. This funding will support the development of advanced tools to detect harmful content more quickly, reduce the time spent on manual processing, and speed up the delivery of critical reports to law enforcement. The modernization project, which is expected to take three years and cost $10 million in total, will also involve tech companies like AWS, Microsoft, and Palantir. TikTok’s contribution underscores its commitment to improving child safety online. The initiative aims to create a more responsive and effective system for identifying and addressing threats to children across digital platforms.