On TikTok, videos will be reserved for those over 18

Soon, TikTok will allow video creators on its platform to limit access to certain content to users over the age of 18. This new feature, which should allow these creators to ensure that their videos are seen by an appropriate audience, will be deployed worldwide in the coming weeks. Since 2022, this kind of restriction was already possible for live videos. And soon, we will also be able to limit the audience for short videos.

Nothing changes for the settlement

But beware, TikTok’s policy does not change. “To be clear: our policies still fully apply to creators using this feature, and we will remove content that contains nudity and other violations of our Community Guidelines”, we read in the announcement of the social network. The idea is simply to allow creators to control the audience of their videos, when they believe that content should not be seen by anyone under the age of 18.

Otherwise, TikTok can also act. The social network has already developed a video classification system that it uses to prevent inappropriate content from appearing on the screens of users under the age of 18. “As we identified content as sexually suggestive or explicit, we blocked teen accounts from viewing over 1 million overtly sexually suggestive videos in the last 30 days alone”announced the platform.

Managing “borderline” videos, a challenge

But it also admits that this identification is sometimes complex. Indeed, if it is now easy for algorithms to detect nudity, the management of content “at the limit” of acceptable or suggestive is more difficult. But to solve this problem, TikTok says it is investing in better automation.

“Our goal is to quickly identify and remove non-compliant content from our platform and prevent borderline or suggestive content from being recommended, or viewable by teen accounts”, explains TikTok. And according to him, he has already made progress in reducing the scope of this so-called “borderline” content.

In other words, some videos shouldn’t be banned from TikTok, but the platform still needs to make sure those videos aren’t viewed by minors. And now, to help TikTok, creators can self-identify when their videos aren’t suitable for people under 18.