Fall 2025 Global Media Cultures Platform Autopsy
Marvel Sciarrino
TikTok Moderation Policies and Community Guidelines
TikTok’s community guidelines are far from unknown. Everyone knows about them, and everyone on TikTok has had SOME kind of run in with it, one way or another. However, one big and obvious issue lies in the community guidelines- they’re way too ambiguous. Full of language that you can’t even get a solid definition out of, TikTok seems to use these guidelines to push content to farm engagement, and remove content that one person could say violates the guidelines, but another will see no problem with.
How it Works
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Examples
Cultural Impact
Proposal for Change
Citations
Jin, Dal Yong. Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age. Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2025.
Couldry, Nick. Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Polity Press, 2016.
Dunn, Kevin C. Global Punk Resistance and Rebellion in Everyday Life Kevin C. Dunn. Bloomsbury Academic, an Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc, 2020.
TikTok. “Overview.” TikTok, 14 Aug. 2025, www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines/en.
Social, ICUC. “TikTok Content Moderation.” ICUC, 4 Sept. 2024, icuc.social/resources/blog/tiktok-content-moderation.
Mitts, Tamar. “Content Moderation Is a Policy Problem, Not Just a Platform Problem.” Princeton University, The Trustees of Princeton University, 11 Mar. 2025, press.princeton.edu/ideas/content-moderation-is-a-policy-problem-not-just-a-platform-problem?srsltid=AfmBOordi3xVONBFsw7YpLBLO1Rn9tsYg3meRboIF-wUtJ6FSxCfbzNI.