TikTok Announces ‘Refreshed’ Community Guidelines Ahead of Congressional Hearing

With a nationwide TikTok ban On the table, the app that brought us so much convenience (and endless scrolling) is shifting its approach to content moderation. Today, ahead of CEO Shou Zi Chew’s appearance before Congress later this week, TikTok unveiled new content moderation policies that vaguely target AI-generated content and climate misinformation.

Tick ​​tock announced the “updated” Community Guidelines this morning, taking effect on April 21st for the app. In particular, TikTok has now taken action against deepfakes, indicate that synthetic media depicting realistic scenes or containing the likeness of a real person must contain a disclosure in the form of a sticker or caption. As The edge points out that TikTok’s previous stance on deepfake technology in the app was little more than a slap on the wrist with a single line in its content policy. The new rule is a bit broader, but still relies on the user being honest about their content.

“The world is changing,” said Julie de Bailliencourt, Global Head of Product Policy at TikTok, as quoted by TechCrunch. “Our community is changing. We see new trends coming and going and we believe we need to update this policy regularly to meet the expectations of the people who use our service.”

Updates to the Community Guidelines also reflect the company’s continued attempts to reining in misinformation that is prevalent in the app and stands out climate change as an issue. TikTok now no longer allows “climate change misinformation that undermines the established scientific consensus, such as: B. denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it”. after to the new community guidelines. Overall, TikTok also says that content containing conspiracy theories involving climate change misinformation will not be sent to the app’s exhilarating and never-ending For You feed until it “s verified by internal and external fact checking.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew revealed this recently At Tick ​​tock Ironically, in places where the app has reached 150 million American monthly active users – that’s almost half the population of the country. Chew also claimed that 5 million US companies are using TikTok to reach their customers and asked viewers to leave comments on his post — which feels more like a rallying cry — describing what to say to elected officials as Chew prepares to do so later this week to appear before Congress.

“Now this comes at a crucial moment for us. Some politicians have started talking about banning TikTok,” Chew appeals in his video as the Capitol looms in the distance. “That could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you right now.”

Chew will appear before Congress on March 23 as discussions continue over a nationwide TikTok ban. South Dakota was the first state attempt to ban TikTok from government devices back in November, an effort that eventually turned into a snowball vague Republican-led bill that could give Biden the power to ban TikTok. While the Biden administration has already done so banned TikTok from devices in the House of Representativesit has also warned the parent company ByteDance that it needs to sell TikTok or prepare for a broader ban.