TikTok has been accused of intimidating and bullying the office of Nationals Senator Ross Cadell over questions he asked technology companies ahead of Australia banning under-16s from holding social media accounts.

Cadell made the allegation on Tuesday as TikTok and fellow social media giants Meta and Snap fronted a Senate committee on online safety in the lead up to the government’s ban, which begins on 10 December.

The senator accused an unnamed member of TikTok’s staff of phoning and intimidating a member of his office during the committee’s previous hearing on 13 October, which TikTok allegedly declined to attend but featured representatives from Google and Microsoft.

Cadell said a TikTok staffer contacted his office during that hearing and said, “We get on very well with the leader’s office, we get on very well with the shadow minister’s office — you should be asking these questions, you shouldn’t be saying this.”

Addressing TikTok’s Australian public policy lead for content and safety, Ella Woods-Joyce, Cadell said: “If a staff member of yours in a government representation area is willing to phone through the switch to a senator’s office while in a hearing and intimidate and bully, how can I believe your company doesn’t have a culture that tolerates that?”

Woods-Joyce said she was “not aware” of the alleged incident.

"What I can say is that the team needs to operate professionally and appropriately at all times, and I have confidence that that’s what we do,” she said.

Senator dubs TikTok ‘a bullying behemoth’

Cadell mentioned reports that TikTok had made threats of legal action while lobbying the government to include Google's YouTube in the social media age ban — a claim which has previously been denied by the Chinese-owned video platform.

The senator suggested TikTok was “a bullying behemoth that wants to get its own way at any cost”.

Woods-Joyce denied this and said the company was “absolutely not” a bully.

Cadell said the TikTok employee who allegedly intimidated his office apologised to his staff member after TikTok confirmed it would attend Tuesday’s committee hearing.

“There was nothing — no address, no recognition of this factor — until you had to face some consequence and show up,” he said.

Following Tuesday's hearing, Cadell told Information Age he was "disappointed" with Woods-Joyce's response.

"I believe the witness probably knew more about it than she let on,” he said.

TikTok did not respond by deadline to a request for comment about the alleged incident.


Nationals Senator Ross Cadell (left) put his allegation to TikTok's Ella Woods-Joyce (right) on Tuesday. Images: Australian Parliament / YouTube

Platforms prepare to suspend under-16s

TikTok, Meta, and Snap told the hearing they were preparing to comply with the government’s age ban, despite disagreeing with how its legislation was being implemented.

Woods-Joyce said TikTok accepted it was in scope of the new laws and was now focused on compliance.

However, she said the firm agreed with some experts who "believe a ban will push younger people to darker corners of the internet where rules, safety tools, and protections don't exist”.

Woods-Joyce said around 200,000 TikTok users in Australia aged between 15 and its minimum age of 13 would be given the option to save their content before temporarily suspending their accounts until they are 16, or deleting them altogether.

Snap’s senior vice president of global policy and platform operations, Jennifer Stout, said while her employer believed its Snapchat platform was a messaging service which should be exempt from the ban, the company would abide by Australia's rules.

She said around 440,000 Snapchat accounts belonging to Australians aged between 13 and 15 would be disabled, but suggested some may have the option of reestablishing their accounts when they turned 16.

Both Snap and Meta again reiterated their argument that device makers such as Apple and Google should be responsible for age assurance through their respective app stores and operating systems.

Social media platforms will be expected to take “reasonable steps” to prevent underage users from holding accounts from 10 December, or face court-imposed fines of up to $49.5 million.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has stated companies which do not comply with the laws or “decided to do nothing” will be met “with force” by her office and the federal government.