TikTok is, without any doubt, a very popular social media platform. Millions of users publish millions of videos every day. But that doesn’t mean it’s without its flaws. I met few things that are constantly irritating me.
The Duality of TikTok
One of the biggest problems of TikTok is its censorship in the comment sections. I can’t count how many of my comments have been taken down for “harassment and bullying” even if it wasn’t offensive towards the video creator or other commentator.
A good example of this would be one of the latest cases of that. I came across a video that shows a situation on the road. Video creator took over another vehicle. In response the other driver took him over in an illegal way and break checked the author. I commented “He got such a pain in the ass that he got taken over, that he had to overtake. I hate drivers with the overgrown ego.” and the comment got taken down shortly after.
It wasn’t offensive towards the video creator or other commenters, but was criticizing illegal activity. Yet it still got taken down for “harassment and bullying”. There’re some more examples, for comments in Polish, check the image description for translation:
And then you can come across videos that are offensive towards specific people or even whole groups of people and it’s completely fine! Those videos aren’t taken down and gets a lot of likes and views.
So, on TikTok it’s fine to be offensive in the uploaded videos but try to say something mildly offensive in the comments like “you’re stupid” and it will be taken down for harassment. If you want to criticize something in comments you need to use very tame language, which contrasts with what is allowed on the published videos.
Poor ad filtering
Another big problem is ad filtering. Don’t get me wrong, I get it, social media platforms need ads to pay for hosting and employee’s salaries. It’s business. Every social media is meant to make money and it’s fine. But ads should be strictly filtered, which on TikTok, they are not.
You can easily come across ads that promote adult websites, services and products, which doesn’t look good for a platform that 13-year-old children can use. There’s a lot of ads that advertise AI tools to sexualize photos or even videos, which is disgusting. Such stuff shouldn’t be allowed on platform that minors can use.
Ad dirty tactics
But that’s not the only problem with ads. A lot of them (mostly from Temu of AliExpress) are using very dirty tactics, which – in my opinion – shouldn’t be allowed. It a flaw in how TikTok works and what they allow to. For example, you can come across a post that looks like a stack of photos, where first one says “Top 10 products that you need” with an arrow that shows you to scroll right.
A lot of people will see it, miss the “ad” icon on the bottom and think “cool, someone found useful products on an Amazon or other shop” and swipe right. And then the website or another app is opening. It is so annoying! If I go to TikTok, I want to watch funny videos, not be redirected to online shops.
I also don’t see how this is profitable. When it happens to me, I instantly quit the website/app and go back to scrolling brainrot. I cannot imagine anyone willingly starting to look through the products and buy something.
And I don’t understand why TikTok allows ads to open other apps or websites with just swiping right. It shouldn’t be like that in my opinion. Ad should require user intention to open anything 3-rd party, and for me swiping is not that.
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Blocking accounts on TikTok
Or should I say, “no way to block users on TikTok”. This platform doesn’t allow you to block users that never messaged you directly. And I have two problems with that.
You cannot block users that are too young for your content. Let me explain that further. You might be swearing a lot on your videos or uploading other content that shouldn’t be viewed by minors. Unfortunately, TikTok doesn’t allow you to block users that try to interact or follow your content.
For contrast, you can freely block anyone you want on a platform like Mastodon. If I think that someone is too young to follow or interact with my content on Mastodon, I can block them.
And with that we go to the second reason why I don’t like it, as well as the probable reason why it is like that. You cannot block anyone on TikTok, because they don’t want you to block every profile that post ads. If they give you the right, you could block every profile that promotes stuff and have ad-free experience, and of course they don’t want you to do that.
Algorithm rabbit holes
It’s a problem that troubles not only TikTok, but most of the mainstream social media. The algorithm that recommends you content have some flaws. And it’s especially annoying on TikTok, because following accounts doesn’t make much sense like on other platforms. Most users only use “For You Page” without following anyone, since algorithm will give them the content they like, and most likely will give them videos from content creators that user previously seen and interacted with.
But it has a dark side. It may happen that you like one post with funny cats, and your whole For You Page is filled with such videos. And let’s be honest, if you only get compilations with funny cats, it will be entertaining for short time, because shortly you will start to see the same clips in different compilations. The only way to “fix” it is taking a break to “reset” the algorithm or purposely search for other type of content.
Will it make me quit TikTok?
Unfortunately, not. At least not for now. TikTok still, despite its flaws, have a lot of fun content, and other platforms are still not good enough. I hope that in the future those issues on TikTok will be resolved, or we get a new platform that will be able to compete with it.
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