According to The Intercept, TikTok administrators have removed videos from users with “poor or bad” looks, even with “quirks.” The Intercept details how the popular social media platform’s administrators were asked to select content for its influential “For You” feed, an algorithmic timeline that most users typically visit immediately after opening the app. “For You” shows users recommended videos. When a video is selected and recommended by “For You,” it shows a large increase in views . However, the criteria based on which a TikTok video is selected to appear as a recommendation on “For You” are not known, as the selection may not be random and automatic.
TikTok administrators were instructed to remove videos from the “For you” feed if they did not resonate with any of the categories. Videos from users with “peculiarities” in their appearance, which could be related to physique, height or face, were deemed to be worthy of removal, since a “bad” appearance makes a video less appealing. For example, if a video from a user with Down syndrome or another peculiarity such as a deformity, accumulates 6,000 – 10,000 views, then the platform administrators report it. Through this report, the user’s videos are not only limited to their country, but at the same time they block the algorithm, preventing it from promoting the videos to other users.
The same policy was adopted for videos in which the shooting is “worn and dilapidated”, since such an image does not offer anything impressive, attractive and “worth seeing”. A TikTok spokesperson stated that the policy of restriction followed by the platform towards specific groups of users was a wrong attempt to prevent cyberbullying. In other words, the platform wanted to protect those people it considers “vulnerable” while at the same time discriminating itself and even without the knowledge of the users.
It is worth noting that the groups of users whose videos were removed are much larger than those presented. The Intercept also reports the extent of TikTok’s previous policies, which required the platform’s administrators to enforce China’s foreign policy on other countries. The Intercept also published company policies, which urge administrators to remove “controversial content” that promotes Taiwanese independence or constitutes an “uglification” of history, such as the Tiananmen Square “incidents.”
The Intercept reports that, according to one source, these policies were in use at least through late 2019. TikTok pointed out that most of the guidelines presented to the Intercept are either no longer in use, or in some cases appear to have never been implemented.
Finally, TikTok, owned by Beijing-based technology unicorn Bytedance, has been trying to separate its international efforts from its Chinese base for about a year, yet many of its staff, including the app's managers, are still based in China.
