TikTok Creates Restrictive Features for Age-appropriate Viewable Adult Content

TikTok creates an age restriction feature. (photo: twitter @tiktok_us)

JAKARTA – Content creators on TikTok who make content more suitable for adults will soon get more tools to limit their audience.

Creators will have the option to restrict users under the age of 18 from viewing short videos on the platform, if they determine the content is only appropriate for older audiences. This includes things like sexually suggestive content that does not violate TikTok's rules but is "within a line".

The company announced last October that Content Creators would be getting a new age-restrictive feature for live streaming so they can block teens from joining streaming for more mature content. The extended age restriction now covers regular TikTok videos, which the company says will be rolling out globally over the coming weeks.

“To be clear: our policies still fully apply to Content Creators who use this feature, and we will remove content that contains nudity and other violations of our Community Guidelines,” TikTok wrote in its announcement, as quoted by The Verge.

Certain videos are permitted but will fall on the edges of TikTok's rules, such as "implied nudity" and sensual content. Creators can share these videos, but TikTok blocks them from being recommended to users on their For You page. The ByteDance subsidiary said it stopped more than a million sexually suggestive TikToks from reaching teen accounts in the last 30 days.

TikTok's recommendation algorithm presents users with various content sequentially, often without threads. For example a clip of a child playing Minecraft could be followed up with a video from a celebrity vacation.

Giving creators the tools to adjust their reach can address some of the concerns users have about their videos being shown to younger audiences while still allowing risky or mature content.

Other platforms like Instagram have recently come close to limiting sensitive content from the viewer side. In June, Instagram updated its settings so users can customize the types of recommendations they want to allow, with options ranging from strict to more straightforward.

Creator and professional accounts can also set a minimum age to view their profile. Like TikTok, the setting doesn't affect content that's outright banned on Instagram, but is another example of how the platform tries to handle content that goes against community guidelines.