Tiktok’s Trust and Safety Initiatives

Strong Adherence to Community Guidelines

The TikTok Community Guidelines are an important code of conduct that provides a safe and welcoming space for everyone. As TikTok prioritizes safety, diversity, inclusion, and authenticity, we believe that a safe environment helps everyone do so openly. We aim to cultivate an environment for genuine interactions by encouraging authentic content on TikTok.

We update our Community Guidelines from time to time to evolve alongside trends, as part of our commitment to keeping TikTok a safe place for creativity and joy.

Safeguarding Trust & Authenticity

Trust forms the foundation of our TikTok community. Trust can be eroded through instances of impersonation, spam, or misleading information. TikTok will remove misinformation that causes significant harm to individuals, our community, or the larger public regardless of intent. Significant harm includes serious physical injury, illness, or death; severe psychological trauma; large-scale property damage, and the undermining of public trust in civic institutions and processes such as governments, elections, and scientific bodies.

This does not include simply inaccurate information, myths, or commercial or reputational harm.

Three Pillars of Commitment

I. Trust and Safety – Keeping our community safe and creative

• We have a dedicated Trust and Safety team that leads on-platform content moderation and ensures adherence to our Community Guidelines.
• We have also partnered with leading global news agency, Agence France-Presse, to help verify harmful misinformation so that it can be removed from our platform.

II. Positive Space – Encouraging credible sources of information on the platform

• TikTok has long prohibited political advertising, including both paid ads on the platform and creators being paid directly to make branded content.
• Political content is prohibited in advertisements, and this restriction is also now applied at account level. TikTok classifies relevant political TikTok accounts as a Government, Politician, and Political Party Account (GPPPA) and applies a number of policies that help prevent misuse of certain features.
• The accounts will be prohibited from any form of monetization on the platform or solicitation for fundraising to prevent misuse of the platform and ensure an enjoyable experience for all.

III. Digital Literacy – Supporting digital literacy efforts with multi sectoral partners

• Commitment to online user safety and education – The Digital Literacy Hub is TikTok’s one-stop portal of resources for driving safer online experiences for everyone. There are topics that promote mental wellbeing, cyber wellness, minor safety, potentially dangerous online challenges, and other digital literacy topics.
• Helping our community: online challenges. In February 2022, we launched a resource page to address online challenges, to provide parents and guardians with clearer understanding of this topic. In our supporting literature, we share quick assessment tools on how one can tell if a challenge may be dangerous, or a hoax, and what you should do next. We’ve also put together a 4-step process: stop, think, decide then act, as a simple way to get our users to think about risk.

Other multisectoral initiatives

• United Nations Development Programme x TikTok Creators Forward campaign, Aug-Sep 2022.

TikTok and the UNDP launched the Creators Forward campaign, which is a series of masterclasses that look at social change messaging for digital creators in Southeast Asia.

TikTok brought together 20 select creators across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, and they were virtually engaged in the masterclasses on anti-hate, anti-bullying & harassment, and counter-violent extremism topics in-region. The efforts culminated in a series of videos aligned with the campaign hashtag #ThinkB4YouDo.

• TikTok x GMA x COMELEC

TikTok partnered with the COMELEC to launch the Philippine Election Guide 2022 during the election season to ensure that users stay well informed and have access to credible election information on the platform. TikTok also partnered with GMA News and Public Affairs to educate the youth and first-time voters on the electoral process, and help voters make informed decisions.

• TikTok x PGI x Internews

TikTok also has ongoing partnerships with Protection Group International (PGI) and Internews as additional means to identify coordinated inauthentic behavior on the platform and further strengthen its fight against harmful misinformation. In addition, we have an existing partnership with the global news agency Agence France-Presse to help identify and remove inaccurate content.