TikTok's Commitment to User Safety and Content Moderation

TikTok prioritizes the safety and comfort of all its users. They have strict policies in place that prohibit nudity, sexual activity, and sexually explicit content. This includes content that directs to adult websites or apps. To enforce these policies, TikTok has a dedicated team of over 40,000 trust and safety professionals. These professionals work tirelessly to develop and enforce the policies, as well as build processes and technologies to detect, remove, or restrict violative content on a large scale.

To ensure a suitable experience for the community, especially minors, TikTok has implemented policies to prevent borderline or "suggestive" content from being recommended in TikTok For You feeds. They continuously work on strengthening the enforcement of these policies.

To safeguard For You feeds, TikTok has policies that exclude certain content categories from recommendation. These categories include implied nudity, sensual content, and content not suitable for audiences over the age of 13. While their technology is advanced at detecting overt nudity, there may still be borderline content that is more challenging for their systems to identify. TikTok is constantly improving their approaches to enforce their policies in this area.

Earlier this year, TikTok introduced the Content Levels system to prevent certain content with mature or complex themes from reaching audiences between the ages of 13-17. This system helps prevent teen accounts from viewing more mature content. In the last 30 days alone, TikTok has already prevented teen accounts from viewing over 1 million overtly sexually suggestive videos.

TikTok has also invested in automation and machine learning models to improve the consistency and accuracy of detecting sexually explicit, suggestive, or borderline content. Their goal is to quickly identify and remove violative content and prevent it from being recommended or searchable by teen accounts. They are launching the next iteration of their borderline suggestive model to improve the detection of such content and create a more appropriate and comfortable experience for teen account holders.

In addition, TikTok has partnered with StopNCII.org, Meta, and Bumble to stop the spread of non-consensual intimate imagery. This collaboration not only provides better support for victims but also helps prevent the posting of such content on the TikTok platform.

TikTok believes in empowering creators to direct their content to the most appropriate audience. They have introduced audience controls for creators to restrict their content to accounts over 18 in LIVE, and they are expanding this feature to creators of short-form videos globally. It is important to note that TikTok's policies still fully apply to creators who use this feature, and they will remove content that violates their Community Guidelines.

TikTok's goal has always been to ensure a safe, positive, and joyful experience for their community, especially teens. They have made significant strides in ensuring that their feeds are filled with appropriate content, and these improvements mark an important next step in achieving that goal.