Amid several investigations looking at TikTok’s impact on younger users, the platform has recently announced a new set of filters and options to provide more ways to limit unwanted exposure in the app.
Your Safety Is Priority
To start, TikTok has launched a new way for users to automatically filter out videos that include words or Hashtags that they don’t want to see. Now, you can block specific Hashtags via the ‘Details’ tab when you action a clip. If, for example, you no longer want to see videos tagged with #blessed, you can now indicate such in your settings, while simultaneously being able to block content containing chosen key terms within the description. It may be good, but it’s not perfect – the system can’t detect the actuarial content, only what people have entered in their description notes. TikTok says that this option will be available to all users ‘within the coming weeks’.
TikTok’s also expanding its limits on content exposure relating to potentially harmful topics such as dieting, extreme fitness, sadness, and more. Last December, TikTok launched a series of tests to investigate how it might be able to reduce these potentially harmful impacts of algorithmic amplification. TikTok plans on limiting the number of videos in certain sensitive categories highlighted in a user’s ‘For You’ Feed. Apparently, TikTok is moving towards the next stage of this project, aiming to stop people from ‘Doom Scrolling’ and becoming obsessed with potentially harmful content.
Lastly, TikTok’s also working on a new content rating system, like movie classifications for TikTok clips. TikTok also introduced new brand safety ratings to avoid advertisers placing their promotions alongside potentially controversial content. What would be interesting to see is how TikTok’s system detects such. Though it’s unclear exactly what systems TikTok has in place to identify such, what’s safe to assume is that they must be advanced, partially explaining why its algorithm is very effective at keeping users scrolling.
The more entities TikTok can register, the more signals it has to match you with your clips. As noted, the update comes as TikTok tackles trouble in the EU over its failure to limit exposure among young users. Last month, TikTok pledged to update its policies around branded content after an EU investigation found it incapable of protecting children from hidden advertising and inappropriate content. In other past news, it has also been suggested that many kids have severely injured themselves and that some have even died while participating in dangerous challenges.
The Wrap
TikTok has introduced measures to combat these too. It’ll be interesting to see if these new tools help to reassure regulatory groups that it is doing everything in its power to keep its audience safe. However, the real issue is that TikTok’s core process seems to incentivize the unsafe and outlandish, with most trendy short-form videos often being dangerously gimmicky and controversial.
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