TikTok was caught blocking people from using ‘Black Lives Matter’ in their bios

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TikTok has been a great place for creators from all walks of life, but a new report shows that the social giant still has some major issues to work out.

Ziggi Tyler (@ziggityler) seems to be the first to discover a glaring problem with the new Creator Marketplace on TikTok. Essentially, the Creator Marketplace is a place where people can connect with brands for sponsorship opportunities.

When trying to update his bio in the Marketplace, he kept encountering errors, getting an “inappropriate content” message. After some testing, he removed words like “Black,” “Pro-Black,” and “Black Lives Matter.” Doing so allowed him to update his bio without issue.

Then, he continued his testing, using words like “Pro-White” and “supporting white supremacy,” and encountered no problems updating his bio.

##greenscreenvideo I’m going live in 30 minutes to answer questions. Y’all need to get this message out. Please. ##fypシ ##fyp ##wrong ##justice

♬ original sound – Ziggi Tyler

Tyler tells Forbes that he wanted to use the Creator Marketplace to “highlight his background to marketers who might want to launch racial justice campaigns or ads featuring more diverse talent.”

In a statement to The Hill, a TikTok spokesperson tells them that the “inappropriate content” flag was an error.

“Our TikTok Creator Marketplace protections, which flag phrases typically associated with hate speech, were erroneously set to flag phrases without respect to word order. 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 27B views on our platform.”

Overall, this is a terrible look for TikTok, regardless of the social giant’s explanation. It would be more believable if terms like “Pro-White” were also banned, but considering that those made it through without issue seems suspect, at best.

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