By Cormac Keenan, Head of Trust and Safety, TikTok

TikTok's mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy to people around the world. This mission is made possible by the critical work our trust and safety team does each day to prevent, detect, and remove harmful content and behavior from the platform. Our goal is to keep TikTok a welcoming, enjoyable place for self-expression, connection, and entertainment. With that in mind, we're making improvements to how we're organized internally to further promote a safe and secure platform for our community.

Bolstering compliance and security in the US

As we continue to act on our commitment to the security of our platform, we're creating a Trust & Safety team within US Data Security (USDS) to build further trust and confidence in the protection of US user data and compliance. This team will be led by TikTok's current Head of US Safety, Eric Han, who is taking on a new role as Head of USDS Trust and Safety. Several of our existing US Safety teams, such as our legal policy team and threat intelligence team, will be reorganized into the USDS Trust and Safety team.

The newly created USDS Trust and Safety team will work on compliance, safety strategies, and moderation for content involving US users' private data. Our Global Trust and Safety team will continue to develop global safety policies for the platform and oversee the moderation of content that does not involve US users' private data globally. Content policies and strategies developed by our global team will be reviewed and approved by USDS to ensure compliance with protocols being developed with the U.S. Government.

Reinforcing our Global Trust and Safety team

At the same time, we're combining forces between the rest of our US Safety team and our Global Trust and Safety Team to deliver on our shared mission to protect people from harm, promote platform integrity, and foster a place that brings people joy. By bringing together the talents of our teams, we aim to create even more effective safeguards for our global community, with increased people power and more seamless handling of potentially harmful content, issues, and events globally.

As one global Trust and Safety team, we will work in unison to build policies, processes, and systems that protect against harm and promote authenticity, diversity, and, above all, safety. Together, we will have over 40,000 talented safety professionals dedicated to keeping TikTok safe.

At TikTok we're focused on supporting the unique cultures and experiences of people on our app. Toward that goal, we're also introducing our Head of Country Policy whose team will work to ensure our global policies meet the needs of the local communities we serve around the world, including the US. TikTok's Director of US Policy, Tara Wadhwa, will move into this role, bringing more than a decade of experience in human rights, policy development and implementation to her leadership of this team.

There's no finish line when it comes to protecting people. We believe these changes will put us in a better position to tackle today's challenges, prepare for next year's threats, and ultimately keep bringing joy, entertainment, and connection to people around the world.