YPF & Tiktok ends 7 months-campaign

Popular short video-sharing platform TikTok and Youth Policy Forum (YPF), a knowledge-sharing platform for young Bangladeshis, have concluded their 7-months-long joint campaign on safe internet usage for Bangladeshi netizens.

For the past seven months, YPF and TikTok have held numerous online workshops and sessions, and have developed a community of over 2000 registered participants from 10 universities in six divisions of the country, reads a press release.

The programme held multiple sessions and workshops so far and had over 1500 reach on social media and over 2600 direct, and nearly 500K indirect reach through the workshops.

The campaign encouraged many youths to pursue safe internet usage, using the hashtags: #SafeAmiDigitally #LetsTokSafety, and #SafeOnSocials.

On 13 August (Saturday) at 8:30pm, the campaign ended with a closing dialogue "Digital Literacy: Our Way Forward." on Facebook live with a diverse field of panellists, including, Enayet Chowdhury, a Multimedia Content Creator & Lecturer of Institute of Water and Flood Management at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET); Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, an Assistant Professor of Department of Computer Science at University of Toronto; Rakhshanda Rukham, Co-Founder of Preneur Lab; Rob Stoelman, Project Manager at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Ferdous Al Mottakin, a Public Policy Leader of TikTok in South Asia; and Prodyut Paul, a Representative from YPF.

The panellists were introduced by YPF's social media lead, Mahpara Nuren Ishfer, with Prodyut Paul, Youth Policy Forum's grassroots network lead, presenting a detailed presentation on the total progress of the campaign, which highlighted the statistical data of the workshops, as well as announcing the winners' names of the competitions that were held on behalf of the program.

Over seven months, the workshops intended to provide a comprehensive understanding of content creation and digital literacy for the participants, as was apparent from the positive feedback received from the participants. Participants admitted that they were not aware of these aspects of TikTok's settings and the community guidelines.

They also shed light on how TikTok encourages positive interactions by promoting kindness and respect online as well as user-friendly settings and features of the platform such as comment control, time management, blocking and reporting options, direct message control, etc.

The sessions highlighted the overall approach TikTok adopts when formulating policies and community guidelines including law, social values, culture, and how the platform enlists the help of regulatory panels, expert panels, and various NGOs, including how the platform enforces its Community Guidelines through actions such as removing content and disabling malicious accounts.

They also touched on topics such as violent extremism, violent and graphic content, juvenile safety, unlawful activities, uncontrolled things, suicide, self-harmful and dangerous activities, adult nudity and sexual offences, hateful behaviour, integrity, and authenticity. They also touched on how TikTok encourages positive interactions by promoting kindness and respect online as well as user-friendly settings and features of the platform such as comment control, time management, blocking and reporting options, direct message control, etc.

In the closing note, the panellists shared their knowledge, experiences, and concerns on the topic of digital literacy, as well as shed light on how the audience of social media operates. Other issues were addressed, including cyberbullying, harassment, hateful behaviour, violent extremism, bad use of graphic content, etc.

The campaign ended on a positive note, with a final wrap on "Safe Internet, Safe you".