TikTok bans any content that could be seen as positive to gay people or to gay rights, even those with same-sex couples holding hands, and even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal, reports The Guardian. TikTok also censors content that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, the banned religious group Falun Gong, among others. Earlier this month, it was reported that TikTok was most likely censoring content around the Hong Kong protests, searches for Hong Kong revealed “barely a hint of unrest in sight”. What all TikTok bans: TikTok's guidelines divided the content into two: 'violations', which is deleted from the platform entirely; and 'visible to self', which leaves content up but limits its distribution. The bulk of TikTok's guidelines covering China are in a section governing "hate speech and religion". It also bans a list of 10 "foreign leaders or sensitive figures" including Kim Jong-il, Kim Il-sung, Mahatma Gandhi, Barack Obama, Narendra Modi, Joko Widodo among others. TikTok has adopted a localised moderation approach: TikTok told the Guardian that it had adopted a local content moderation, and is working to "empower local teams that have a nuanced understanding of each market". These general guidelines were replaced in May 2019 with "localised approaches, including local moderators, local content and moderation policies, local refinement of global policies". It has implemented this localised approach across everything from product, to team, to policy development. What are the specifics of the local guidelines? TikTok runs two other sets of guidelines along with the…
