News

TikTok’s 18-and-up videos have arrived. Don’t get the wrong idea about what that means.

TikTok is extending the hours of its adult swim. The app is letting users restrict their videos so only viewers only the age of 18 can watch.

In a blog post, TikTok announced an expansion of its Content Levels, which group the app’s users by age and restrict the content seen by younger groups. As part of that effort, TikTok is bringing more support to a feature it first launched last year. In October, the app revealed that TikTok Live users over the age of 18 would be able to host streams that are “limited to adults.” Now, a similar feature will be available on standard TikTok videos.

The short-form version of the 18+ barrier is arriving on TikTok now and will be expanded to more users “over the coming weeks.” The app hopes this change will allow users to direct content to “the most appropriate audience.”

Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories

Subscribe

With its adults-only content, TikTok is making its intentions known. It’s not trying to be the next OnlyFans, and simply intends to protect its youngest users. “To be clear: our policies still fully apply to creators who use this feature, and we will remove content which contains nudity and other violations of our Community Guidelines,” reads the company’s blog post

. “We regularly educate creators about our policies because it takes a village to create a space where everyone feels welcome and safe.”

The 18+ filter is not the only tactic TikTok is employing as it attempts to make its For You Feeds safe for viewers of all ages. Like its competitor YouTube, it is investing in AI to increase the speed and accuracy with which it moderates its platform. It has also partnered with StopNCII. As that organization’s name implies, its goal is to end the proliferation of all non-consensual intimate imagery.

These efforts are already product results. TikTok noted that its Content Levels prevented teens from seeing 1 million “overtly sexually suggestive” posts during a 30-day period.

TikTok has a powerful ally in its fight to protect social media’s youngest users. President Biden announced a similar mission during his 2022 State of the Union address. Now that TikTok is aligned with the White House on underage security, it can continue pushing for a deal that would solidify its standing in the United States.

Share
Published by
Sam Gutelle

Recent Posts

Have you heard? MrBeast’s Shark Tank spot, Minecraft goes after Roblox, and a robo racoon gets us in the mood for spooky season

Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends,…

21 hours ago

The last thing creators add, the first thing viewers notice: Why Adobe is introducing music, speech, and sound effect generation to Firefly

In 2023, Photoshop developer Adobe jumped into generative AI with its launch of Firefly. Firefly…

1 day ago

Live Nation is capitalizing on the creator economy with a new firm

Ticketmaster parent Live Nation is getting into the creator biz. The publicly traded multinational corp,…

2 days ago

Netflix gets a bite of ‘Chicken Shop Date’

Netflix is getting a bucket of Chicken Shop Date. Amelia Dimoldenberg's long-running flirty-casual interview series…

2 days ago

Surprise: Neon is also making an SCP Foundation film, but correctly

Neon, the production company behind films like Parasite, Longlegs, and Anora, has decided it's going…

3 days ago

Noel Miller on why TMG Studios is breaking into fictional podcasts–and why it won’t touch gen AI

"If we're the last human-led media channel and everything else is prompted and generated in…

3 days ago