TikTok, Links, and Community Guidelines

I don’t think anyone ever thought TikTok would be a platform for actual researched academic discussion, yet here we are in 2021 with professional academics and researchers having meaningful conversations through 60-180 second videos about all sorts of subjects. I’m deep enough into TheatreTok, for example, that my FYP is often filled with conversations about Viewpoints analysis or preferred methodologies for devising theatrical productions in specific environments. We share resources with each other in the comments section for further reading, analysis, and discussion.

Not anymore, I guess.

Last week, I received my first ever Community Guidelines violation on TikTok. I cited my article over at The Avocado for “The Bellero Shield” episode of The Outer Limits. I don’t always cite where I publish specific articles, but that episode allowed me to dabble in Shakespearean adaptation and analysis and I know my theatre followers would be more interested in my genre criticism than they usually are. I linked to the article and went about my day. I opened the app later to see the video held for longer than usual (I will never be out of TikTok jail for the crime of supporting Black Lives Matter right when I joined the site, so literally all of my videos get reviewed for hours or days before they get released) and I had a Community Guidelines violation. There was no other explanation, just the quoted comment with the link to the article.

I got anxious, as I do. What did I do wrong? Was it linking to The Avocado specifically? How I phrased the comment? A wrinkle in the system?

Turns out I wasn’t alone. My FYP has a wonderful and needed discussion about a new wave of censorship on TikTok right now. Both professorcasey and butterflyastrophysics received similar Community Guidelines violations for citing their peer reviewed academic sources in their own comments sections. professorcasey was even banned from commenting at all for receiving too many Community Guidelines violations. How many is too many? Two. That’s all.

TikTok is very strange about linking and sharing videos in general. They have in-app ways of cross-posting to Instagram or sharing the video links, but they are poorly designed and a hassle to actually do. You can put a link in your profile after you get 1000 followers, but TikTok puts up a massive warning screen about the link possibly being dangerous if it goes to a Linktr.ee, Beacons, or other aggregate pages. To even access someone’s account on a browser, you need to have the “@” symbol before their username or it just goes to an error page.

Around the same time that TikTok revealed it was trying to clamp down on sex workers having a platform on the app at all (regardless of what their account was: they could be knitting in a turtleneck sweater and be banned for offering adult services nowhere near TikTok), they mentioned trying to stop people from leaving the app at all. This is around when links in profiles started to get warnings if you clicked them. TikTok wants you to just stay on TikTok, even though their app has its own browser perfectly capable of displaying a linked academic journal or article. You don’t actually leave the TikTok app when you click on a link; you’re browsing the internet using the TikTok app. You’re literally still engaging with their platform.

The great irony here is the Community Guidelines violation not mentioned in the Community Guidelines. There is nothing in the rulebook saying you can’t link in the comments. Calling something a Community Guidelines violation that doesn’t violate Community Guidelines is a lazy form of censorship. Most people aren’t going to read the Community Guidelines, but they’re messing with people who have to read, research, plan, and write dense texts with precision every day as their job. The false Community Guidelines violations and never-answered appeals process isn’t going to fly here.

I don’t know why TikTok is so threatened by this now, but any link in a comments section from your average user or creator is going to be automatically flagged and moderated. Even if an appeal is found in your favor, the flag never leaves your account. You can and will be punished down the line for having ever been accused of violating the Community Guidelines, so these false accusations have far greater implications than you might imagine.

This is especially dangerous for those academic communities that have formed through TikTok. If you can’t cite your source when actually having a researched discussion, you’re opened up to accusations of plagiarism and academic misconduct.

What this is going to do in the not-too-long-run is actually push people away from the platform. Academics who need to cite sources will stop producing content because they can’t do it in a responsible way, all thanks to TikTok. Apps like TikTok live and die off of engagement, so a blanket ban on links for whatever reason (never actually listed in the Community Guidelines) will hurt their own business.