TikTok’s new guidelines: Dangerous trends and eating disorders targeted in new rules
Unsplash: Solen Feyissa/TikTokTikTok has revealed their latest community guidelines update with a focus on dangerous trends, hateful ideologies, eating disorders, and more.
TikTok has been the home of thousands of viral trends, millions of new creators, and has even helped create a few new internet celebrities such as Charli D’Amelio, Addison Rae, and more.
With over a billion users every month, they also have an issue with creators joining the app to harass others online, which has prompted the company to continuously update its community guidelines in an effort to curb harassment and dangerous acts.
They’ve now updated their terms again, this time providing a rundown of the main changes they’ve made — with a focus on dangerous trends, eating disorders, among other things.
YouTube: Kallmekris/TikTokTikTok Community Guidelines update
TikTok revealed the new community guidelines updates on February 8, 2022, with a focus on supporting the well-being of the community and the integrity of the short-form video platform.
In an accompanying blog post, the company put emphasis on several main updates that they plan on implementing over time.
Dangerous acts and challenges
While TikTok revealed, in November 2021, that they will be hammering down on dangerous acts and trends like the blackout challenge and the “devious lick,” they will hammer down on Suicide hoaxes to keep them from spreading on the app.
Wikimedia CommonsThe company sat down with experts to launch new videos from creators to call on their existing ‘stop, think, decide, and act’ method of deterring people from participating in dangerous challenges.
Eating disorders
The company has announced that they have sat down with eating disorder experts, researchers, and physicians to help curb disordered eating.
As some people may not have an official eating disorder diagnosis, TikTok wants to crack down on symptoms like over-exercise and short-term fasting.
Hateful ideologies
While TikTok has almost always prohibited deadnaming, misgendering, and misogyny on the platform, they have created a separate section of the community guidelines to put explicit emphasis on the rules.
Unsplash: Solen FeyissaSecurity, Integrity, availability, and reliability of the platform
They will be opening “state-of-the-art” cyber incident monitoring and investigative centers in Washington DC, Dublin, and Singapore by the end of 2022.
These centers will be created in an effort to crack down on unauthorized access to TikTok, as well as the app’s content, accounts, system, or data, as well as the use of TikTok to perform a criminal activity.
The community will be able to find more information about categories that are not able to be recommended on the apps FYP, all within the community guidelines page.
Constantly adjusting guidelines on an app like TikTok could prove to be worthwhile as it has continued to be the home of a wide variety of ever-evolving content, and continues to grow in users every single day.