TikTok says it is expanding its audience controls feature. The features give creators on the platform the ability to restrict their video to adult viewers. Prior to this update, the controls feature was only available for TikTok Live.
“We’ve started to bring our audience controls feature to creators of short-form video and will expand the feature globally over the coming weeks,” TikTok explained in a blog post. “To be clear: our policies still fully apply to creators who use this feature, and we will remove content which contains nudity and other violations of our Community Guidelines.”
The feature works similarly to the adult-only livestreams on TikTok; the 18+ restriction setting for video is not a way for creators to display adult content, as the content is still subject to TikTok’s policies. The feature from TikTok’s point of view is to help creators prevent minors from coming across content targeted at adult audience.
Recall that TikTok had said it wanted to start identifying which content is appropriate for younger and older teens versus adults. The company then said it was already working on a system that will help in identifying and restricting certain types of content from being accessed by minors and that it would start asking creators to specify when their content is more appropriate for an adult audience. The expansion, all but confirms what the company said earlier.
Meanwhile, TikTok has just launched a new version of its “borderline suggestive model” to help identify sexually explicit content. According to a statement on the company’s blog, its priority has always been to make everyone “feel safe” while using its platform.
“We want everyone to feel safe and comfortable when they spend time on TikTok. We’ve always had strict policies prohibiting nudity, sexual activity, and sexually explicit content, including content that directs to adult websites or apps. Over 40,000 dedicated trust and safety professionals work to develop and enforce these policies and build processes and technologies to detect, remove or restrict violative content at scale,” the company said in a blog post.
A TikTok spokesperson said the new mode is now better able to detect so-called “borderline content,” videos that do not explicitly break the company’s rules, but may not be suitable for younger users on its platform.
Lately, TikTok made available a new tool that allows you to understand why a particular video was recommended to you in your For You feed. The new feature which was announced a couple of weeks ago, brings more context to content recommended in For You feed.
