An Adults-Only feature is coming to TikTok. Err, does that mean…

TikTok has announced that they are going to increase the minimum age of TikTok Live hosts from 16 to 18. They also plan to introduce a new way for Live creators to choose if they’d prefer to only reach an adult audience.

“The foundation of TikTok is built on community trust and safety. To protect our users and creators and support their well-being, we constantly work to evolve the safeguards we put in place. Today, we’re making additional changes and improvements to help our community have the best experience possible when they use Live,” wrote TikTok in their newsroom announcement.

According to the company, they cite that users might want to try out “a comedy routine” that is “better suited for people over age 18”. They also mention that creators might want to share a “difficult life experience and they would feel more comfortable knowing the conversation is limited to adults”.

While I understand where they’re coming from, an Adults-Only feature might also be a platform where explicit content can thrive. Does this mean that live pornography could be easily found on TikTok when you’re an adult (or masking as an adult) on TikTok?

However, the platform currently has a strict ban on most of the content that would be traditionally considered “adult”. In their community guidelines, they do not allow nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content. But TikTok hasn’t clarified if its Adults-Only Live feature would be more lenient.

The age increase for the Live feature starts on 23 November 2022. By then, only adult users will be allowed to stream. TikTok’s Adults-Only Live platform will be introduced “in the coming weeks”.

Additionally, TikTok is also introducing a couple of other features for its Live platform. This includes a Multi-Guest feature, which lets hosts go Live with up to 5 guests, and a Live keyword filtering tool.

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