LONDON: Social networking service TikTok’s algorithm recently blocked users of its Creator Marketplace from using the word black or phrases such as Black Lives Matter in bios, flagging them as “inappropriate content.”
The Creator Marketplace platform, currently still in the invite-only beta testing stage, allows creators to connect with brands for sponsorships and paid promotions.
Ziggy Tyler, a creator with more than 340,000 followers on TikTok, discovered the issue when updating his bio and was prevented from using words and phrases including black, Black Lives Matter, I am a black man, black people, black success, and pro-black.
However, when he replaced the word black with the word white the algorithm allowed him to proceed. Tyler further found that the phrases pro-white, and I am a neo-Nazi, were not flagged.
TikTok released a statement clarifying the error and claimed that the algorithm was not programmed to identify or respect word order, therefore it erroneously flagged the phrases because its hate speech detector associated the words black and audience, which contains the word die.
The censorship mirrored a type witnessed during the recent Palestinian-Israeli conflict, when hundreds of items of pro-Palestine content were taken down from popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement (7amleh) documented more than 700 cases of content takedown and removal of accounts that were advocating for the Palestinian cause and reporting on Israeli violence.
TikTok users expressed their outrage on the short-video sharing app and one user said: “@tiktok Every day, you give us a reason to believe that you are racist, address this.”
Another highlighted that the problem was common across all social media platforms and was not limited to TikTok.
