How to Silence Your TikTok Trolls
Is any social media platform really troll free? My theory is that LinkedIn will be our last stronghold for extremely serious publishing. In the meantime, TikTok continues to update the ways in which users can limit hate and insults.
According to a report on compliance with the Community Guidelines for the second quarter, released earlier this week, in just the past three months TikTok deleted 81,518,334 video with hatred and insults. Of course, this is a devastating number in terms of the sheer scope of the hatred (assuming that the bulk of these community abuses are real hate and not just a video of a horrible female nipple ). At the same time, this is an encouraging number in terms of TikTok’s efforts to combat hate on its part, rather than placing the burden on individual users. For example, last July, TikTok added a feature that prompts users to consider if their comment is inappropriate or unkind before posting it; nevertheless, the trolls persist.
Whether you’re a TikTok creator or want your TikTok-ing kids safe, here are the tools to make life for trolls as easy as possible.
Are you going to live? Use updated mute settings
Following its report, TikTok is releasing updated mute settings for comments and questions during live broadcasts, including removing the comment stories of disabled people that viewers can see. TikTokers has always had the option to block accounts or remove the ability to comment on their posts (more on that below), but that route poses a major obstacle to getting views from an audience that isn’t nasty little trolls.
For the uninitiated: “Going LIVE” allows TikTokers to connect with their followers in real time via comments; On the other hand, these live streams give trolls a real-time channel to stalk TikTokers members. In a blog post titled “Our Enduring Fight Against Hate and Harassment,” Eric Khan, head of US security at TikTok, wrote that “Live streaming on TikTok is an exciting way for creators and viewers to communicate, and we keep it safe. design expertise … We hope these new controls will further empower both hosts and audiences to deliver safe and fun live streaming. ”
Anecdote aside: as a creator, live streaming dramatically increases the views of your latest video. This (unofficial) incentive for TikTokers makes sense from a business standpoint: live streaming is a hub where viewers can donate to hosts through in-app purchases.
But even if you don’t go into VIDEO MODE, you can still take steps to block accounts and filter comments on all of your videos.
Comment Filters
You have several options for filtering comments. First, tap the Profile tab at the bottom of the home page and select the settings menu — those three horizontal dashes — at the top of the screen.
On the account page that opens , select ” Privacy” and scroll down to ” Comments” (under the heading ” Security” ). In the comment filters section, you will see the options “Filter all comments”, “Filter spam and offensive comments” and “Filter keywords”.
- Filter All Comments: Prevent comments from appearing on your posts without your permission. If you’d like to approve which comments will appear under your videos, click “View Filter Comments” at the bottom of the screen.
- Filtering spam and offensive comments : A mystical algorithm tries to identify potentially dangerous comments and prevent them from showing up in your posts (if you don’t approve of them).
- Keyword Filtering : Select specific keywords and block any comments that include them from appearing in your posts without your permission. Personally, I’m going to filter “Sean White” so that people stop pointing out how much I look like him.
Block accounts
Sometimes you just need to block the troll at the source. Go to his account and click the settings button in the upper right corner of his profile page. Then click ” Block” and select ” Confirm” . This prevents a blocked account from accessing your profile or any of your content in their feed. Also on the Security tab, you can choose who may or may not send you private messages.
Protect your videos
To keep your account safe without going into complete privacy, you can play around with all the video settings in the Privacy menu. Consider if you want people to duet, stitch and download your videos.
Hate and bullying are very contextual issues, so if you’re wondering how TikTok aims to make its platform more secure, I recommend reading their latest report here .