TikTok Introduces Classification Systems and Algorithm Features for a Safe and Entertaining Experience on the Platform
TikTok’s diverse community transcends generations, spanning from teens to grandparents and everyone in between making sure to keep this in mind when building by limiting features by age, empowering its community with content controls, and supporting families with parental controls. Today, TikTok announces new features and technologies that will help viewers discover more content, customize their viewing preferences, and continue to have a safe and entertaining experience on TikTok.
TikTok sought to empower viewers with ways to customize their viewing experience, by rolling out a tool people can use to automatically filter out videos with words or hashtags they don’t want to see from their For You or Following feeds. As viewers watch and engage with content on TikTok, they discover a whole world of interests and ideas. And whether someone’s interests stay the same or change, TikTok’s goal is for their users’ For You feed to be a mirror of their own interests, a window into different cultures and a bridge to new ideas shared among our global community.
In addition to these features, the platform continues their efforts in playing a positive role in the lives of the people who use the application, and is committed to foster an environment where people can express themselves on a variety of topics, while also protecting against potentially challenging or triggering viewing experiences. With that in mind, last year the platform began testing ways to avoid recommending a series of content with similar topics that do not violate its Community Guidelines and may be fine as a single video but potentially problematic if viewed repeatedly, such as topics related to dieting, extreme fitness, sadness, and other well-being topics. TikTok has also been testing ways to recognize if its system may inadvertently be recommending a narrower range limited set of content to a viewer.Whether people come to TikTok to search for recipe inspiration, have a laugh after a long day at work, or discover new interests through their For You feed, the platform continually works to create a safe and enjoyable viewing experience. TikTok’s Community Guidelines are central to thisby setting the standards for what is and is not allowed on the platform. Within these strict policies, the platform understands that people may want to avoid certain categories of content based on their personal preferences; or for its teenage community members, some content may contain mature or complex themes that may reflect personal experiences or real-world events that are intended for older audiences.Recognizing this, TikTok is working to build a new system to organize content based on thematic maturity and will be introducing content levels to help further safeguard the viewing experience. In the coming weeks, the platform will begin to introduce an early version to help prevent contentwith overtly mature themes from reaching younger audiences under the age of 18. Once a video that contains mature or complex themes is detected, for example, fictional scenes that may be too frightening or intense for younger audiences, a maturity score will be allocated to the video to help prevent those under 18 from viewing it across the TikTok experience.Many people will be familiar with similar systems from their use in the film industry, television, or gaming. TikTok is currently building with these in mind while at the same time knowing it needs to develop an approach unique to its platform. TikTok has focused on further safeguarding theteen experience first and in the coming months it plans to add new functionality to provide detailed content filtering options for our entire community so they can enjoy more of what they love.TikTok continues to build and improve its systems to contribute to long-running industry-wide challenges in terms of building for a variety of audiences and with recommender systems. At the same time, the platform acknowledges that what it’s striving to achieve is complex and mayensue some mistakes.
