TikTok outreach and partnerships manager KahnJi Weerachaising | Photo by Tyrone Piad
SINGAPORE — Filipino content creators on popular social media platform TikTok have a lot to say—and show—to their audience across the globe.
Abi Marquez, fondly known as the “Lumpia Queen,” shares her love for Filipino food, especially those wrapped in lumpia and fried in hot oil, in her cooking channel on TikTok, where she has more than 3 million followers. Licensed pharmacist Arshie Larga has risen to popularity for producing funny and engaging content about safe medicine use. Niana Guerrero draws in her over 43 million followers through entertaining dance covers, which also feature her equally talented siblings.
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They are just some of the most followed TikTok personalities dominating the daily feeds of users. “Every market is unique. From the Philippine side, it is quite diverse in terms of authenticity and also creativity in the community,” says KahnJi Weerachaising, TikTok outreach and partnerships manager.
But not all content makes it through the ‘For You’ pages of TikTok users as the social media giant removes videos that are against community guidelines. It is TikTok’s way of making the platform safe for users of all ages.
‘Inappropriate’ videos
In the first quarter, TikTok took down 4.26 million videos in the Philippines because they were not in accordance with its policy.
About 99.7 percent of these posts were removed proactively. This means the inappropriate content had already been flagged even before a user reported it, Weerachaising explains.
Some 95.4 percent of them were also taken down within 24 hours.
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According to TikTok’s First Quarter 2024 Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, these posts had issues relating to misinformation, harassment and bullying, hate speech and hateful behavior, sexual exploitation and gender-based violence and animal abuse, among others.
But the social media giant asserts that the figure only represents a small portion of the content being produced by the creators. On a daily basis, it estimates that 200 million videos are being posted across the globe.
Still, TikTok assures that the videos are being moderated using an automated technology that monitors the flow of content creation. For example, its tools can detect if the video contains dangerous tools like knives, guns or even alcohol.
These posts, in addition, are also being vetted by over 40,000 human moderators.
Crafting community guidelines
Weerachaising says they regularly update their community guidelines in coordination with subject matter experts and even content creators themselves.
“We take a holistic approach when crafting our policy and also community guidelines,” she says. “Every year, we find many recommendations from the focus groups we engage with.”
Just last May, TikTok published a new creator code of conduct, which everyone is expected to adhere to in order to keep the platform a welcoming and safe environment.
Apart from taking down videos, the accounts of creators who are in violation of the terms of service may be suspended or permanently deleted.
The code prohibits behaviors that pose harm to others, including bullying and harassment.
Creators should not promote harmful or dangerous activities that may put people or animals in danger, as TikTok does not allow violence on its platform.
Helping the creators
TikTok also warned against “participating in activities involving spam, fake engagement or continuous solicitation of engagement or gifts, misinformation, false representations or violations of intellectual property rights.”
“We publish the new updated community guidelines to enhance the clarity, especially on the part of hate speech and health misinformation,” Weerachaising adds.
Apart from enforcing the platform policies, TikTok is making efforts to help creators understand the community guidelines in order to encourage further content creation.
For newbie creators, Weerachaising says they will be given first violation warning strike should they post inappropriate videos to flag them immediately. This is to notify them if they are not aware of the mistakes they made.
This feature also points out which specific community guidelines were violated by the content creators so they can learn from them, she notes.
The platform has also enabled the Account Check feature to “enable creators to quickly audit their account and their last 30 posts and see at a glance whether they are in good standing on TikTok.”
“We want to help our creators understand our rules more. We dedicated time to develop some features [to] make sure our creators better understand the [rules],” she says.