https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/a31257444/lizzo-calls-out-tiktok-swimsuit-video/
Surprise, surprise! TikTok is facing some heat once again! TikTok, the popular video sharing app, faced some criticism last week for censoring posts. Lizzo, the Grammy award winning singer and body positivity advocate, spoke out about TikTok removing videos of her on her account showing her wearing bathing suits. Lizzo claims that it is obvious that TikTok is trying to censor her videos because she is a plus size woman. This criticism comes along with many other criticisms of TikTok’s censorship algorithm which has also been found to censor the posts of many LGBTQ+ users and users with disabilities. Since Lizzo opened up publicly about her criticism of the app, TikTok has since restored at least one of Lizzo’s many videos showing her wearing a swimsuit. It is unclear whether or not TikTok plans on restoring all of the singer’s videos.
As a dedicated user of TikTok, I continue to find it more and more shocking that so many people are reporting instances where TikTok has been censoring their videos. This article claimed that a spokesperson from TikTok said that the TikTok censorship algorithm automatically deleted Lizzo’s videos because they were initially believed to be violating community guidelines. After reviewing the videos, TikTok decided to restore at least one of the videos once they realized that Lizzo was wearing a swimsuit and not underwear (flashing your underwear violates TikTok’s community guidelines). I continue to believe that the overarching issue with TikTok is their overly sensitive censorship algorithm. I do not believe it is doing TikTok any good to rely on an algorithm to decipher underwear from a swimsuit, and make decisions about what is censored and what isn’t, if it continues to cause TikTok to face so much backlash.
LIS 4022 Spring 2020 