A major pro-life group was just banned from TikTok for violating its community guidelines, even though its guidelines say nothing against posting videos of cute babies.
On Thursday afternoon, Live Action posted a 15-second clip on the social media platform. It shows a young woman copying a viral trend, holding up two candies, each in front of one option. On her right, the screen reads, “Be pro-abortion”; on her left, it’s “Be pro-life and help save babies.” She eats the candy on the pro-life side, and the clip flashes through adorable baby photos on Live Action’s social media accounts.
Harmless, right? But just an hour later, TikTok deleted the video for violating its “community guidelines,” according to Live Action. The group appealed the removal, and half an hour after that, Live Action was banned entirely from the platform.
TikTok appears to have blackballed Live Action for being pro-life. The social media platform still hasn’t explained its decision to Live Action, but one possibility is that TikTok will claim that the pro-life group violated its policy against “misinformation,” which includes “misinformation that may cause harm to an individual’s health, such as misleading information about medical treatments.” Being pro-life doesn’t actually save babies, or some such nonsense.
Another possibility is that they are somehow objecting to the pictures of babies at the end. These clearly do not violate TikTok’s written guidelines, but this wouldn’t be the first case of a social media platform moving the goalposts based on political motives.
Now Live Action, with its engaged user base of 21,000 followers, will no longer be able to share its pro-life message with those who need to hear it most: young people. TikTok has 500 million active users across the globe, many of them teenagers who use the app to keep up with their peers and copy viral trends.
It has also recently become a useful platform for brands and professionals to share information about their work. Though there have been concerns in Washington and in the military that the Chinese-owned app could be used to collect data on U.S. citizens. But for the present, its threat is one of censorship.
Like other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, TikTok has been known to shut down content that its owners don’t like, and Live Action has often been a recipient of such censorship. Last year, Pinterest blocked Live Action from its platform for spreading “harmful misinformation.” The social media platform falsely accused Live Action of spreading false information about vaccines, even though “Live Action has been and remains neutral on the issue of vaccines,” according to the group.
The TikTok incident is just the latest example of a social network deplatforming an organization for expressing the wrong opinions. There’s nothing harmful about Live Action, but it has committed a transgression just as condemnable in communist China as it is among liberals in America: It’s pro-life.
Update: As of Friday afternoon, Live Action’s TikTok account has been reinstated. A statement from TikTok reads: “TikTok is a platform for creative expression that welcomes diversity of users and viewpoints. Following a review, we have determined that there were no violations of our Community Guidelines and the issue was the result of a human error by a moderator. We apologize for the mistake and have reactivated the account.”
