TikTok has announced that it is expanding its audience management capabilities, allowing creators to restrict their videos to adult audiences. Prior to this expansion, the adult-only audience control feature was only available on his TikTok Live. Now, the company is bringing this feature to short-form videos as well.
In a blog post, TikTok said, “We have begun rolling out audience management capabilities to creators of short-form videos, and we plan to expand this feature globally in the coming weeks.” We will continue to apply fully to creators who use the feature and remove content containing nudity or other violations of our Community Guidelines.”
As with adult-only live streams on TikTok, the 18+ restriction setting for videos is not how creators display adult content. This is because the content is still subject to the app’s policies. Instead, TikTok sees this setting as a way to prevent minors from encountering content intended for an adult audience or not of interest to minors. When TikTok rolled out its adult-oriented livestream, the company said the setting could be used for comedy creators who wanted to share her content more suitable for people over the age of 18. It makes me feel more comfortable knowing that the conversation is restricted to adults.
The expansion of audience control settings comes after TikTok previously said it wanted to start identifying what content is suitable for teens and teens and adults. TikTok is developing a system to identify and restrict certain types of content from being accessed by his teenage users, telling creators that their content is more appropriate for adult audiences. He said he would start asking you to specify the case. We use the app’s Audience Control feature to see this in action.
TikTok also announced the launch of the next iteration of its borderline-suggestion model, which automatically identifies sexually explicit, suggestive, or borderline content. The next iteration of TikTok’s borderline implicit model is expected to improve detection of such content.
These announcements are part of a broader effort to improve safety features for teens in TikTok’s app. Last year, TikTok rolled out content levels to keep certain content on more mature or complex subjects out of reach for his teen. As part of these efforts, TikTok says the teen’s account has prevented him from watching more than 1 million sexually suggestive videos in the past 30 days alone.
Child and teen safety is an area where TikTok faces intense scrutiny not only from regulators and lawmakers, but also from parents. A group of parents sued TikTok after he died.
