TikTok is starting to experiment with age-restricting ways of certain types of content in its app amid a push to increase for teenagers. Work is in the early stages, but the company says the goal is to protect young users from adult content or other potentially inappropriate videos.
TikTok, like other social media apps, has recently faced increasing scrutiny for how it handles user safety, especially for children and teenagers. At a Last fall, the company’s Vice President of Public Policy suggested that the app is working on new ways “to enjoy age-appropriate content.” Now, the company has shared some more details on what that could look like.
According to Tracy Elizabeth, TikTok’s global affairs policy lead, TikTok, long known for its uncanny accuracy of recommendation algorithms, is working on features that can categorize content based on “level of strength” appropriate content levels and thematic safe areas”. “Once the system is fully launched, content that we have identified as containing publicly available adult topics may be restricted to adolescents,” she said at a press conference. with reporters. “And for content with less… adult topics, our community members will be able to choose the safe zones or maturity levels of content they want to ignore or opt in to.”
Elizabeth did not elaborate on how the company defines video maturity, saying that the work is in an “innovation phase”. But she says it could end up being the same rating used for movies, TV and video games. “We know that there is content for families, there is content for teenagers, and there is content for adults,” she said. “What we want to do is… say” go for it: you can choose for yourself the category that you feel most comfortable with. She added that parents can also control these preferences for their children through TikTok’s Setting.
Separately, TikTok is also developing a feature for creators that will let them tell if their videos are intended for adults or younger users. This can help provide more information on TikTok’s recommendations to ensure that more mature content stays out of younger users’ feeds.
While TikTok is currently running a small test of age restrictions, it could still be a while before these features are widely available, and Elizabeth noted that they are still being conceived. “Much of this we haven’t quite decided yet how we’re going to do it,” she said.
In addition to those features, TikTok an updated set of community guidelines. According to the new rules, TikTok will introduce and dangerously challenges its own division in an attempt to make policy more visible. The company is also expanding the type of content under its eating disorder policy. The new rules would ban videos that promote “disordered eating,” such as excessive calorie counting, short-term fasting, excessive exercise and other “potential signs of an underlying problem.” .
Finally, TikTok is also updating its rules to explicitly prohibit “dead naming, misspelled or misspelled names, and content that supports or promotes conversion therapy programs.” The company said it had previously removed these types of posts, but the rules weren’t specifically outlined in its community guidelines for the public.
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