With a potential US ban looming, TikTok has today announced that it has updated its Community Guidelines, which now includes new provisos relating to synthetic media, hate speech, and election integrity efforts. The updates seem to better align with what US officials might prefer when it comes to content moderation. TikTok also notes that its Community Principles are also based on its ‘commitment to uphold human rights, and align with international legal frameworks’.
Guided
According to TikTok:
“To inform the most comprehensive updates to our Community Guidelines to date, we consulted more than 100 organizations around the world, including our US Content Advisory Council, and members of our community. Their input helped us strengthen our rules and respond to new threats and potential harms.”
The main changes to TikTok’s policy are in the synthetic media section, which now clearly states that AI creations depicting realistic scenes must be labeled as such. TikTok’s new policy also states that AI depictions of private citizens are prohibited, while public figure depictions are, so long as they’re not used to endorse products, lest they cross-platform policies. With the use of generative AI tools on the rise, TikTok’s looking to get on the front foot, while also providing clear guidelines that protect politicians from misinterpretation.
TikTok has also added ‘Tribe’ as a protected attribute in its hate speech and hateful behavior policy, providing more culturally sensitive consideration, while it’s also added new, specific rules for protecting government and political party accounts, combating election misinformation.
There’s clearly this tilt towards benefitting and protecting politicians here – the same people who are now lobbying for TikTok to be banned – while the updates more align with emerging usage behaviors and trends, providing more ways for TikTok to crack down on misuse. To add, TikTok says that it has also overhauled how it presents its rules, with sections now separated thematically into different topic areas.
TikTok has shared the four pillars of its moderation approach:
Remove violative content.
Age-restrict mature content so it is only viewed by adults (18 years or older).
Make content ineligible for recommendation in the For You feed that isn’t appropriate for a broad audience.
Empower our community with information tools and resources to stay in control of their experience.
The Wrap
These updates showcase a dedicated effort to better ingratiate TikTok with US regulators, by aligning with the key pain points that have been deemed as ‘concerns’ by US officials. The updates also further separate TikTok from the rules applied on Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sister app, which, ideally, will help show that TikTok is a separate entity not dictated by Chinese ownership.
Overall, these new Community Guidelines are easier to understand – so while it may appear as a ‘beg’ to appeal to US officials, it’s intrinsically a good update, which should help users better understand the platform’s rules.
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