By Adam Presser, Head of Operations & Trust and Safety

Creators play a fundamental role in helping maintain a safe and entertaining environment for everyone on TikTok. We focus on empowering people with information about our policies and tools so they can safely express themselves and connect with others. Today, we're announcing updates to our Community Guidelines that further clarify our rules along with new features that help creators learn our policies and check their account status.

More clarity about TikTok's rules

Our Community Guidelines are the rules and standards that apply to everything and everyone on our platform. Today's update, which will take effect next month, builds on our ongoing work to improve understanding and bring greater transparency about our rules and how we enforce them.

In this latest iteration, we have added and updated definitions to provide more clarity about our policies, for example on hate speech and health misinformation. We've also included more detail about how we moderate TikTok features, such as Search, LIVE, and the For You feed.

We're also updating our For You eligibility standards, which help create a safer For You feed experience that's suitable for a broad audience on TikTok. We're introducing a policy to make an entire account temporarily ineligible for recommendation in the For You feed if a creator repeatedly posts content that goes against our For You feed standards. Their account and content will be harder to find in search. We will notify creators when their account has been restricted in this way, and they will be able to appeal.

Helping creators understand our rules

We always look for opportunities to help creators better understand our unique rules and have introduced a warning strike when a creator violates our Community Guidelines for the first time. The warning strike does not count toward an account's strike tally, but any future violations will. We notify creators about which rule they've broken and how they can appeal if they believe a mistake has been made. Zero-tolerance policies (for example, incitement to violence) aren't eligible for these reminders; accounts will immediately be banned.

Improving account status information for creators

We will also be making it easier for creators to check their account status as we begin to roll out 'Account Check'. This new feature will enable creators to quickly audit their account and their last 30 posts, and see at a glance whether they are in good standing on TikTok. Account Check will also include information about whether access to certain features, like comments or direct messaging, has been restricted due to violations. Creators will also be able to see whether their content has been removed for breaking our rules or has been restricted from reaching the For You feed.

With this information, creators can both better understand how their content and behavior may have affected their standing on our platform, and how they can appeal decisions if they believe we've got it wrong. This is in addition to the existing "Account status" page, introduced last year, which lists a creator's video violations.

Setting standards for creators involved in TikTok programs

Today we're also publishing the TikTok Creator Code of Conduct, which will take effect in the coming weeks. These are the standards that we expect creators involved in TikTok programs, features, events and campaigns to follow on and off-platform, in addition to our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. We believe that being a part of these programs is an opportunity that comes with additional responsibilities, and this code will also help provide creators with additional reassurance that other participants are meeting these standards too.

We'll continue to focus on helping our community, and in particular our creators, better understand what our rules are and how we enforce them to provide a safer experience for over a billion people on TikTok.