The Intercept, a news organization, recently exposed TikTok for filtering “undesirable” users from appearing on individual’s customized home pages. Internal documents revealed that the makers of the app told moderators to hide videos made by people who were classified as “too ugly, poor or disabled from the platform.”

The documents specifically identified undesirable users as people with “ugly facial looks,” specifically those with “eye disorders, crooked mouth disease and other disabilities.” Content produced in what moderators deemed as “slums, rural fields, dilapidated housing, [or] construction sites” were also targeted.

Similar actions were taken to suppress political content from TikTok livestreams. Bans were issued to people who “harmed the national honor” during their livestreams. It is unclear what country is being referred to. 

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese corporation, and these policies were translated into English by their global offices. This may be the reason they sound odd in wording, but the egregious content in the documents stands for itself.

The purpose, as stated in the documents, for filtering and suppressing this content was to improve TikTok’s image and attract new users. However, when asked, TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner claimed these policies were “an early blunt attempt at preventing bullying, but [they] were already out of use when The Intercept obtained them.” The Intercept counters this by saying the information they received from their sources indicated these policies were active through late 2019.

This is not the first time TikTok management has been less than transparent with their problematic practices. In Feb. 2019, a 19-year-old user in Brazil committed suicide on livestream, and it stayed up for more than an hour and a half before TikTok took it down. It took them almost three hours after learning of the suicide to contact the police. They chose to discuss how to keep the incident from tarnishing their image first.

The more that is learned about TikTok, the less advisable it seems to encourage children and teens to use the app. TikTok has shown little to no regard for the safety of its users. The content itself is artificial in order to promote the best possible image of the app. 

It is important that young people can view and be exposed to different types of individuals, even those deemed not attractive, talented and/or rich. Increasing the presence of people who have different disability, economic status, race, sexual orientation and gender from one another on social media is valuable to building acceptance and tolerance of those from marginalized backgrounds. 

Monitoring harmful and offensive content makes sense, but someone should not be censored for simply existing and being disabled, poor and/or unattractive. If TikTok is so concerned with their image, they should realize diversity is better for their platform than having their content dominated by only perfect-seeming people.

Even though TikTok claims these policies are not in place anymore, they may have another objectionable policy in its stead. They have proven themselves untrustworthy. At some point, they were even under investigation from the U.S. government due to suspicion of sending American user data to Chinese companies. It is a matter of time before another scandalous incident is revealed.

TikTok’s implementation of these discriminatory policies in the first place is horrendous. Apologies from their spokespeople aside, these protocols never should have existed. They may have removed them, but it is too little, too late. TikTok has shown itself to have few redeeming qualities besides producing some forgettable viral content. If it persists with its trend of problematic behavior, it might be time to find a different favorite video-sharing app.