TikTok has updated its content guidelines to prohibit several practices it says could harm LGBT users.
The new policies include explicit bans on using transgender individuals‘ old names or pronouns, engaging in misogyny, or promoting pro-conversion therapy content. This update was part of a larger attempt to clarify and expand on the video app’s Community Guidelines to combat what TikTok views as dangerous or hateful content.
“Our policies are designed to foster an experience that prioritizes safety, inclusion, and authenticity,” wrote TikTok Head of Trust and Safety Cormac Keenan in an update released on Tuesday. “They take into account emerging trends or threats observed across the internet and on our platform.”
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The update’s restrictions on speech include “deadnaming, misgendering, or misogyny as well as content that supports or promotes conversion therapy programs.”
Keenan notes that although “these ideologies have long been prohibited on TikTok, we’ve heard from creators and civil society organizations that it’s important to be explicit in our Community Guidelines.”
TikTok’s guidelines do not provide precise details on how practices would be deemed to have violated the new rules.
The content update also broadened its restrictions on eating disorders, stating TikTok would also “remove the promotion of disordered eating,” a broader category of actions than eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia. The company changed its policy on eating disorders a day before the Wall Street Journal released a deep dive into TikTok’s algorithmic promotion of eating disorders.
TikTok also promised to expand its security policy and announced it would open “state-of-the-art cyber incident monitoring and investigative response centers in Washington D.C., Dublin, and Singapore this year.”
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All TikTok users should expect to see a prompt to read TikTok’s updated Community Guidelines in the next few weeks.
TikTok saw its user numbers surge in 2021 despite the Trump administration’s attempt to ban the platform in 2020, becoming the most popular website in the United States with over 100 million users nationwide.
