TikTok Deliberately Sorted Out Posts Made By "Ugly" People

Chinese video-sharing app TikTok told its moderators to suppress content by users deemed ugly, old and poor, preventing their posts from reaching the frontpage "For You" section of the app. The ruleset, undisclosed to the general users, also had moderators punishing those whose live content "endangered national honor and interests," documented military or police activity, or contained discussions of sex.

The Intercept obtained two leaked policy documents that shed light on how TikTok employed discriminatory tactics to increase the app's user retention. One part of the document provides moderating instructions for content that can reach the "For You" section of the app – these selected videos are then shown to the general audience of the app.

The policy, presented both in English and Chinese, had moderators sort out content coming from users that have "abnormal body shape," were deemed obese or too thin, had a beer belly or suffered from dwarfism, with such content being "not recommended" to new users. Those deemed "ugly" by a number of criteria such as having scars or facial deformities were also "not recommended," which barred users from being featured in "For You." This applied to the content in which the user itself is the main focus of the video.

Another section of the same document put similar restrictions on content that depicted "shabby" environments such as slums, rural fields and dilapidated housing, with such content also being stripped of the chances of being featured.

Another set of documents lays out rules for punishing users who livestream certain types of content. For example, a broadcast "endangering national security, national honor and interests" could earn you a permanent ban from the app, as could talking about the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. Livestreaming police or military activity would result in a three-day ban. The policy also lists punishments, including temporary and permanent bans, for various types of behavior deemed inappropriate by the TikTok team, such as "discussing the topic of sexual reproduction."

TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner commented that the "ugly content" rules "represented an early blunt attempt at preventing bullying, but are no longer in place, and were already out of use when The Intercept obtained them." As for the livestreaming guidelines, "most of [them] are no longer in use, or, in some cases, appeared to never have been in place," Gartner insisted. However, The Intercept's sources indicated that both sets of policies were in use through at least late 2019, and that the livestream policy document was created in 2019.

In December 2019, German publication Netzpolitik reported on how TikTok earlier artificially supressed access to videos created by disabled, overweight and LGBT users in an effort "at preventing bullying." The documents obtained by The Intercept, however, included a policies which did not appear in that report, including suppression of content from "ugly," poor and old users. Moreover, no mention of the anti-bullying purpose of the policy was discovered: instead, the the policy only mentions appealing to new users on the app.