welcome Douyin to the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online

(April 22, 2021, Beijing) Douyin, one of the most popular short video social media platforms in China, joined the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online (Coalition) today on Earth Day.

Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, reaches more than 600 million users daily. As of December 2020, an average of over 400 million video searches were made per day on the platform.

Douyin is committed to strength platform regulations to crack down and prevent illegal wildlife trade. With support from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and TRAFFIC, Douyin has optimized the 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. 

YK 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. "

Collaborating with NGOs and the public to save animals

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.

The 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.