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I don’t think this certainty about this being “PR bullshit” is warranted at all, and feels a bit like knee-jerk cynicism. The actions as described in the press

I don’t think this certainty about this being “PR bullshit” is warranted at all, and feels a bit like knee-jerk cynicism. The actions as described in the press release seem to me both plausible and reasonable. Banning multiaccounts for severe infractions makes sense, and it also makes sense that this account could have been caught up in that. As for the video takedown... you may underestimate the consistency of human moderators. They are often under intense time pressures and mistakes are made all the time. There is also the potential for individual moderators to apply their own bias to the report outside of company policy. With a 50 mins reversal of the takedown, that seems plausible. If they are not outright lying, it does seem like the title is accurate and not at all misleading. It does sound like a moderation mishap.

ioerstets 7y ago
If I recall, the video was not taken down. Her account was still active so people could see the video, but her access to the account was blocked for a month. It’s ironic because TikTok was getting a lot of flak in the news recently because they were too slow to remove actual terrorist propaganda. So they probably went overboard and it resulted in this situation. Damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
- Thorrez 7y ago
  >but her access to the account was blocked for a month. Do you mean she actually experienced 1 month of blockage, or that they planned to block her for a month but actually didn't. The article says she was only blocked for 2-3 days (Nov 25 until now).
- laughinghan 7y ago
  The press release specifically states that the video was taken down: "November 27, 2019 @ 7:06am ET – Due to a human moderation error, the viral video from November 23 was removed."
- baybal2 7y ago
  Want to add to this. Tiktok blatantly violates Google's device ID policy, and actually admits it in writing. > We share your device ID with measurement companies so that we can link your activity on the Platform with your activity on other websites; My contact at google said a year ago when I asked if they know about Alibaba's device ID abuse for advertising targeting, it's their policy to not to touch Chinese companies' device ID abuse.
  - shaneprrlt 7y ago
    Was just thinking that. Wasn’t sure if it was an Android or iOS device, but just outright admitting to brazenly violating these policies. But yeah, go figure, big tech kneels down and kisses the communist ring once again.
Xelbair 7y ago
>As for the video takedown... you may underestimate the consistency of human moderators. They are often under intense time pressures and mistakes are made all the time. There is also the potential for individual moderators to apply their own bias to the report outside of company policy. With a 50 mins reversal of the takedown, that seems plausible. And how that does excuse them? If company cannot handle quality moderation with current workforce they should invest in either more qualified people, more people or tooling. User, and customer to generalize, should not care about that - to them company/service is a black box that provides desired output for their input(content, money, personal information etc). Whatever goes inside box is of no relevance. I can get empathizing with employees - in fact everyone should do that, but empathizing with a company? Hell no.
- afiori 7y ago
  You are never going to get perfect performance and correctness from any kind of moderation. You will always underfit and overfit the set of allowed content. This kind of complaints are missing the point. Youtube allowed predatory copyright claims without any kind of burden of proof on the claimant (only recently they punished a copyright troll). If this was indeed a mistake of human moderation AND the platform is not plagued with them, then I don't understand what you are expecting of them; having so many moderators to have 0% error rate?
  - scribu 7y ago
    > I don't understand what you are expecting of them; having so many moderators to have 0% error rate? That sounds like a reasonable expectation, yes. If a company doesn't achieve it or is not even making incremental progress towards it, then it should come under fire.
    - Angostura 7y ago
      I'm sure you only use systems with 100% uptime too.
    - afiori 7y ago
boomlinde 7y ago
> I don’t think this certainty about this being “PR bullshit” is warranted at all, and feels a bit like knee-jerk cynicism. It's always warranted. It's Public Relations, not Public Information, and it's created exactly to convey the best public image that they can muster given the circumstances. Official statements like it should always be regarded with suspicion, because there is little incentive to explain the situation fairly when not doing so is likely to convey a better public image. It's funny, because if we called it "propaganda" (which PR essentially is) and all agreed that it is, no one would accuse you of being cynical for not trusting it at face value.
- noobermin 7y ago
  That's probably true, they want to convey the best image they can. I feel like people are trying to insinuate something more sinister is going on, like they are lying.
noobermin 7y ago
Tbh, compare that to the response of youtube takedowns and (rather poor) human moderation which are famously terrible. I'm not sure about Tik Tok but a human undoing a bad action in 50 min should be lauded. It's only because it's a politically charged subject people will see bias no matter which way they look at it.
hrktb 7y ago
> Banning multiaccounts for severe infractions makes sense, and it also makes sense that this account could have been caught up in that. I am on the fence on this one. The first ban was over satire. Tiktok recognizes not being open to satire, which is refreshingly straightforward in a way, yet still giving me pause for a social media. Especialy when it’s not the co tent just taken down but the whole account banned. The “multi-account” part then comes from the girl using the same phone to create a second account after the first one got banned. It’s not an elaborate scheme to game the system and auto praise her videos, or an account farm or that kind of behavior. She would have had a single account if the first one was still alive. All in all they make it seem like she did a lot of very unrully things when for most other platforms it would have been totally OK behavior. In particular spending that much time to make her look controversial for satire and humanist speach is unwarranted.

ioerstets 7y ago

If I recall, the video was not taken down. Her account was still active so people could see the video, but her access to the account was blocked for a month. It’s ironic because TikTok was getting a lot of flak in the news recently because they were too slow to remove actual terrorist propaganda. So they probably went overboard and it resulted in this situation. Damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

Thorrez 7y ago
>but her access to the account was blocked for a month. Do you mean she actually experienced 1 month of blockage, or that they planned to block her for a month but actually didn't. The article says she was only blocked for 2-3 days (Nov 25 until now).
laughinghan 7y ago
The press release specifically states that the video was taken down: "November 27, 2019 @ 7:06am ET – Due to a human moderation error, the viral video from November 23 was removed."
baybal2 7y ago
Want to add to this. Tiktok blatantly violates Google's device ID policy, and actually admits it in writing. > We share your device ID with measurement companies so that we can link your activity on the Platform with your activity on other websites; My contact at google said a year ago when I asked if they know about Alibaba's device ID abuse for advertising targeting, it's their policy to not to touch Chinese companies' device ID abuse.
- shaneprrlt 7y ago
  Was just thinking that. Wasn’t sure if it was an Android or iOS device, but just outright admitting to brazenly violating these policies. But yeah, go figure, big tech kneels down and kisses the communist ring once again.

Xelbair 7y ago

>As for the video takedown... you may underestimate the consistency of human moderators. They are often under intense time pressures and mistakes are made all the time. There is also the potential for individual moderators to apply their own bias to the report outside of company policy. With a 50 mins reversal of the takedown, that seems plausible. And how that does excuse them? If company cannot handle quality moderation with current workforce they should invest in either more qualified people, more people or tooling. User, and customer to generalize, should not care about that - to them company/service is a black box that provides desired output for their input(content, money, personal information etc). Whatever goes inside box is of no relevance. I can get empathizing with employees - in fact everyone should do that, but empathizing with a company? Hell no.

afiori 7y ago
You are never going to get perfect performance and correctness from any kind of moderation. You will always underfit and overfit the set of allowed content. This kind of complaints are missing the point. Youtube allowed predatory copyright claims without any kind of burden of proof on the claimant (only recently they punished a copyright troll). If this was indeed a mistake of human moderation AND the platform is not plagued with them, then I don't understand what you are expecting of them; having so many moderators to have 0% error rate?
- scribu 7y ago
  > I don't understand what you are expecting of them; having so many moderators to have 0% error rate? That sounds like a reasonable expectation, yes. If a company doesn't achieve it or is not even making incremental progress towards it, then it should come under fire.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    I'm sure you only use systems with 100% uptime too.
  - afiori 7y ago

boomlinde 7y ago

> I don’t think this certainty about this being “PR bullshit” is warranted at all, and feels a bit like knee-jerk cynicism. It's always warranted. It's Public Relations, not Public Information, and it's created exactly to convey the best public image that they can muster given the circumstances. Official statements like it should always be regarded with suspicion, because there is little incentive to explain the situation fairly when not doing so is likely to convey a better public image. It's funny, because if we called it "propaganda" (which PR essentially is) and all agreed that it is, no one would accuse you of being cynical for not trusting it at face value.

noobermin 7y ago
That's probably true, they want to convey the best image they can. I feel like people are trying to insinuate something more sinister is going on, like they are lying.

noobermin 7y ago

Tbh, compare that to the response of youtube takedowns and (rather poor) human moderation which are famously terrible. I'm not sure about Tik Tok but a human undoing a bad action in 50 min should be lauded. It's only because it's a politically charged subject people will see bias no matter which way they look at it.

hrktb 7y ago

> Banning multiaccounts for severe infractions makes sense, and it also makes sense that this account could have been caught up in that. I am on the fence on this one. The first ban was over satire. Tiktok recognizes not being open to satire, which is refreshingly straightforward in a way, yet still giving me pause for a social media. Especialy when it’s not the co tent just taken down but the whole account banned. The “multi-account” part then comes from the girl using the same phone to create a second account after the first one got banned. It’s not an elaborate scheme to game the system and auto praise her videos, or an account farm or that kind of behavior. She would have had a single account if the first one was still alive. All in all they make it seem like she did a lot of very unrully things when for most other platforms it would have been totally OK behavior. In particular spending that much time to make her look controversial for satire and humanist speach is unwarranted.