In the last few hours, a warning message has been appearing on TikTok when a video is published. A few lines, in which we remember that they begin with “there is a rapidly evolving situation in your country”. There are now many reports.
The reports continued throughout yesterday. On TikTok Warning messages are popping up for creators when they post a video. It is a sort of note, which reads: “There is a rapidly evolving situation in your country. Be careful about the posts you publish, report potentially violating content and help us keep TikTok safe. Remember, we do not allow content that threatens others, incites violence or encourages criminal behavior.” It is a message that appears for both video that deal with current affairs topics and those dedicated to other topics. Among the comments we read: “It came out to me before posting the graduation video.” Critic Marco Ballarinimayor of Corbetta with a profile TikTok from 1.7 million followers: “Almost worse than censorship: sorry TikTok but whatever you are, I’m not. I don’t like this stuff.” A note: the alert appears only onceafter it has been accepted it no longer returns to the user’s feed.
Comments from users who found each other also appeared in Ballarini’s post the same message: “I just wanted to post a Kpop themed video”, “I just wanted to post an edit and it came up”, “It appeared to me too, I thought it was a bug”. A user posted another message, similar but not exactly the same: “Events are evolving rapidly. Please use caution when interacting with sensitive content and create content responsibly on LIVE. We are committed to keeping TikTok a safe and civil space and will continue to remove content that violates our Community Guidelines.”
From memory it is the first time that a similar alert. And maybe it’s not even the only filter that has been put in place. We did a test: the morning of October 29th we published a video related to the Youssef Siher case. In addition to the alert, we also received reports in the comments that something wasn’t working as usual: “ps know that my app glitched badly when I commented and then when I shared your video”. Not only that: “I just saw that my comment was “reported by the community”. Which community exactly is unknown, since I’m the only one commenting.” In fact the comment was the first, of a video published on a small profile. It is unlikely that there were any immediate community interventions.
We asked TikTok Italia for the reasons for this warning, according to the message that appears before publishing the video it is part of normal prevention campaigns when crisis situations arise in an area: “TikTok condemns all forms of violence and does not allow contents that incite it or promote criminal activities. We distinguish between contents that document protests and those that incite violence, guaranteeing access to information and public debate, while at the same time combating the improper use of the platform”. And specifically: “Finally, we have introduced an informational message that is shown only once to users when they post content. As the situation continues to evolve rapidly, the message encourages users to be careful with the content they post and to respect our Community Guidelines. It does not impose any additional restrictions on users’ ability to publish content and is aimed solely at providing information and raising awareness among users.”
