Clarifying the Timeline of Events and Apologizing for an Error

By Eric Han, Head of Safety, TikTok US

There has been significant interest and confusion regarding a user's two TikTok accounts and her viral video discussing the Uighur community in China. In this post, we aim to clarify the timeline of events, apologize for an error, and explain our moderation philosophy and the steps we will take moving forward.

Timeline of events:

On November 14, 2019, at 2:34 pm ET, a TikTok user posted a video on her previous account (@getmefamousplzsir) that included an image of Osama bin Laden. This violated our policies against content featuring terrorist figures, resulting in a ban on the account. No China-related content was moderated on this account.
On the same day, at 7:53 pm ET, the user created a new TikTok account (@getmefamouspartthree) and posted 19 videos.
On November 23, 2019, at 7:05 pm ET, the user posted a video on her second account discussing the Uighur community in China. This video has since received over 1.5 million views.
On November 25, 2019, at 3:32 am ET, as part of our scheduled enforcement, we banned 2,406 devices associated with accounts that had violated our policies on terrorism, child exploitation, or spam. Since the user's banned account (@getmefamousplzsir) was linked to the same device as her second account (@getmefamouspartthree), she was unable to access her active account from that device. However, the account itself remained active, and its videos continued to receive views.
On November 27, 2019, at 7:06 am ET, due to a human moderation error, the viral video from November 23 was mistakenly removed. This removal was not in line with our Community Guidelines, and the video was reinstated at 7:56 am ET after the error was identified.

Apology:

We sincerely apologize to the user for the error made this morning. We have decided to override the device ban in this case and allow the user to access her active account (@getmefamouspartthree) from her previously used device. Our device ban policy aims to prevent coordinated malicious behavior, which was not the case here.

Moderation philosophy and commitment to the community:

Ensuring TikTok remains a safe, positive, and welcoming environment for our users while respecting their freedom of creative expression is a complex task. We employ technology to detect and remove content that clearly violates our Community Guidelines, such as extreme violence, child exploitation, pornography, or spam. Human moderators play a crucial role in reviewing videos that may not have clear-cut answers. We acknowledge that mistakes can happen, as seen in the case of @getmefamouspartthree's video. When errors occur, we are committed to addressing and rectifying them promptly, providing training to our moderators, and making necessary changes to prevent similar mistakes in the future. We take full responsibility for our errors.

To enhance transparency, we will release our first transparency report and a more comprehensive version of our Community Guidelines within the next two months. We will also review our policies to allow for exceptions in education and satire, similar to other platforms.

We remain dedicated to working collaboratively with our community and stakeholders to fulfill our mission of bringing creativity and joy to our users.