TikTok, the popular video-sharing social networking service, faced scrutiny late last year for reportedly censoring the videos of people with disabilities and people in the LGBTQ community. This censorship was apart of of TikTok’s anti-bullying policy that aims to protect users they deem to be “susceptible to bullying or harassment based on their physical or mental condition”. TikTok prevented some users’ videos from showing outside of their home country, whereas others had their videos removed from the “For You” page after the video reached a certain view count. After the many criticisms of TikTok’s policy went public, TikTok issued a public statement admitting that the policy was wrong and that they would get rid of the censorship.
In my opinion, I think that TikTok’s anti-bullying policy is a double-edged sword. On one hand, I do think that it was great that TikTok cared so much about its users that they made a policy to attempt to decrease the chances of bullying and harassment on the platform. On the other hand, I sympathize with the users that TikTok deemed to be “susceptible to bullying and harassment”. If I were a TikToker, I wouldn’t like the fact that TikTok is deciding to suppress and censor my videos without my consent. Additionally, I think that this anti-bullying policy was one that could easily be interpreted the wrong way. For example, by repeatedly censoring the posts of LGBTQ users who use the rainbow flag emoji in their captions, it can easily seem like TikTok is discriminating against members of the LGBTQ community.
Overall, I think TikTok made a good decision to drop the censorship and state openly that the policy was wrong. I believe that the best way for TikTok to protect users from harassment and bullying is to have strict anti-bullying policies when it comes to what users can and cannot say in the comment section. If a user writes a comment on a video that gets flagged by many other users for bullying or harassment, TikTok should warn that user that their account could be deleted if they continue to post such comments.
LIS 4022 Spring 2020 