After comedian Ziggi Tyler called out TikTok, the company has reportedly issued a response. Recently, Tyler’s videos went viral after he showed that TikTok allowed words like “neo-Nazi,” “pro-White” and “White supremacist” to be included in bios for the Creator Marketplace, but other phrases and terms including “pro-Black,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Black success,” and “Black people” were banned or flagged as inappropriate content.
Tyler said he was “done” with the platform and urged others to bring awareness to TikTok’s policies, and soon, the popular social media app faced backlash from its users.
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A spokesperson for TikTok issued a statement to Forbes regarding the controversy.
“Our TikTok Creator Marketplace protections, which flag phrases typically associated with hate speech, were erroneously set to flag phrases without respect to word order,” they said. “We recognize and apologize for how frustrating this was to experience, and our team has fixed this significant error. To be clear, Black Lives Matter does not violate our policies and currently has over 27 billion views on our platform.”
Still, Tyler told Forbes that the platform disabled the ability for his videos to be stitched or dueted, and the “Black” phrases continue to be flagged. This controversy comes during a time when Black creators on TikTok issued a “strike” due to White creators stealing their content only to be rewarded with television appearances and sponsorship deals.
Check out Tyler’s videos below.
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