What TikTok’s New Community Guidelines Actually Mean for You

TikTok is trying to make your For You page a little safer. On April 17, TikTok announced that it’s updating its community guidelines to limit hate speech and health misinformation from appearing on your For You page. The new guidelines are expected to go into effect in May.

Once the new guidelines are active, content that’s flagged as promoting disordered eating or conspiracy theories shouldn’t appear on your For Your page. Accounts that repeatedly share these kinds of content will be harder to find in search as well, TikTok wrote in a press release. TikTok also introduced a Creator Code of Conduct, which holds influencers to a higher standard of behavior as they take part in TikTok’s monetization and reward programs. 

TikTok’s announcement comes at a busy time for the social media platform. The US House of Representatives passed a national security spending bill on April 20 that included language that would force a sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance. A similar measure failed to gain traction in the senate earlier this year, but TikTok and its users were extremely concerned the legislation would effectively ban TikTok. The new bill now faces a senate vote.

Here’s what you need to know about TikTok’s new community guidelines and For You page eligibility.

TikTok adds safeguards against hate speech, health misinformation

Community guidelines are rules that lay out what content is and isn’t allowed on the platform. On TikTok, there’s an extra layer to these guidelines that outlines what content is eligible to be recommended across For You feeds. 

What’s new in TikTok’s community guidelines are two new standards concerning hate speech and health misinformation. The new standards state that content flagged as promoting these things, like videos about disordered eating and conspiracy theories, won’t be eligible to appear in TikTok users’ For You feeds.

TikTok gives a few examples of what kind of content they are making ineligible. For health misinformation, content showing or describing “potentially harmful weight management behaviors” is off-limits. Videos from people claiming to be dietitians with dubious credentials promoting intermittent fasting come to mind. Also ineligible is content that promotes weight loss products, rapid weight loss exercise regimens and cosmetic surgery without proper risk warnings.

Under the misinformation category, TikTok states that “conspiracy theories that are unfounded and claim that certain events or situations are carried out by covert or powerful groups, such as ‘the government’ or a ‘secret society'” will be limited from sharing and possibly removed. Other content that’s ineligible under this standard are posts that misrepresent results from scientific studies — like a video claiming a study found vaccines are bad when the study actually found the opposite — and use repurposed media, like using footage of a concert crowd and claiming it’s from a political protest.

By adding these new standards of eligibility, TikTok is trying to help you avoid falling into potentially dangerous rabbit holes. The algorithm that creates your For You page is powerful, so when you interact with a certain kind of content, TikTok sends you more of it. Limiting hate speech and health misinformation on your For You page tries to cut you off from cycles of misinformation before they even start. We’ll have to wait until these guidelines are active to see just how effective TikTok is at actually doing this.

Updates to TikTok’s warning strike system

In addition to updating its community guidelines, TikTok is rolling out a new feature called Account Check for you to verify your account’s standing with TikTok. TikTok has been using a strike system for the past year, where each violation results in a strike, and once you meet a certain number of strikes (depending on the kind of violation), your account is banned. 

Account Check should provide more clarity about which, if any, of your videos TikTok has flagged as violating its policies. The feature audits your account and your last 30 posts to highlight any content that’s been flagged as violating TikTok’s guidelines. You’ll also be able to see if you’ve been restricted from using certain features like direct messaging, live streams and commenting. You will continue to be able to appeal TikTok’s decisions.

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