FOR THE LOVE OF ENTERTAINMENT OF THE PEOPLE IN AMERICA PLEASE READ THIS PETITION. 

If you are a CREATOR ON TikTok 

or KNOW OF A CREATOR ON TikTok that has been wrongfully banned, trolled until banned, had videos removed for nonsensical reasons, etc. THIS IS FOR YOU! 

We are trying to get TikTok to fix their policies here in America so that we creators do not have to struggle during wrongful bans, removed content, and restarting new profiles. 

 

We are creators on TikTok, at least we were, until for the second time, we were permanently banned.

 

Has this happened to you or someone you know?

Have you lost a large portion of your audience?

Are you a viewer that has seen an account you love being taken down?

Have you lost out on gifts and subscribers and/or money?

Has a creator that you enjoyed been ripped off of TikTok?

 

If any of these answers are yes, please read and sign this petition. 

 

Once we have collected enough signatures, we will present TikTok with this to make sure that they see there are MANY people who are going through this and need a way to express (and not through a bot chat) that they are having trouble with their accounts and sometimes (if not most of the time) being wrongfully banned and years of work pulled down for nothing. Please help us prove our point! We as creators do not want to give up our time, energy, creativity, and accounts all for someone to be able to rip it down in the blink of an eye. Viewers who love seeing their favorite creators on TikTok deserve to keep watching the content they admire and love. Help us make a change. Help us change the terms and policies of TikTok so that we can continue doing what makes us and others happy and other creators can do the same! 

 

Our story:

TikTok changed the landscape for us and the podcast/entertainment show that we have been doing for 5 years. We first started on Facebook (ugh) and moved to YouTube almost exclusively.  We were streaming on Twitch but didn't have too much engagement there and eventually when TikTok started gaining in popularity, we started adding videos to the app.  For almost five years we have been on TikTok and at the time we first signed on to the app it was Musical.ly, not TikTok.  That should give some perspective on how long we have been using the app. 

It takes hours to make a good video on TikTok, and it takes even longer to have one take off in views to the point where people start interacting with content. It is hard work! 

If while reading this, it is hard to understand the struggle because you are not a creator, let me go a little deeper. 

 

In order for creators to get views and an audience that allows growth, it takes SO much time. Creating videos takes about 1-2 hours and sometimes longer depending on what you are trying to do. Now, imagine doing that multiple times a day, each day. Sure, it takes one video to pop off, but staying in front of people is the key and doing that takes time.  If in doing this, the intention is to grow, well, you are dedicating a large portion of the day to TikTok and TikTok alone. 

 

As creators, we dedicated a ton of time to the app. We built up a decent-sized following and we were finally able to start going live! It was a big deal to us and when we found out we were able, we went live and received our first gifts. We celebrated and thought it was the coolest thing that people wanted to pay us to do the things we enjoy; we even cried a little.  We started to thoroughly enjoy the app and found it tremendously beneficial for our show. All the excitement and steam to keep going was there and we were in it to win it until we started to get violations. 

 

It's too easy to get a violation on TikTok. The app seems to abide by almost more intense than Disney-level, PG-rated policies and it isn't accurate to the world that we live in.  We have spent hours creating content and had it pulled off of our feed because of things that do not even make sense. Same with the live feature. In our most recent live, we received a violation for “artificially inflating our audience numbers”, which is hilarious because our views were half of what they usually would be. Now, TikTok has had a lot of issues with us lately and some violations we can understand, but inflating our numbers is something we don't even know how to do. We had to look up what it even means to inflate our numbers because we were so unfamiliar with the violation and terminology.

 

This was just one instance. We have received violations for almost every live show we have done. A few of the violations made sense, but most of them were pretty ridiculous. We are asking TikTok here in America to review their policies and change them to work with creators here. No other app is this strict and there are people on there all the time doing things that we see as very similar, that or very normal, but for some reason, we are stuck in this situation where we have lost viewers, we've lost a platform that brings in regular new viewers, and we have also lost out on a ton of time and money. When we appeal to TikTok they often tell us that there was no real violation and give us access again. Being wrongfully banned feels like a punch in the gut.  We know this is happening to other creators too and we aren't alone in this issue. 

After losing access to our TikTok, we have communicated with other creators that have gone through the same exact things. They have shared with us their concerns and the fact that they too have been wrongfully banned. Now, not only are they spending a ton of time working on content for a new account, but they are also working hard to submit appeals each day and asking their audience to do the same thing for them. 

 

In this situation, you basically have to spam TikTok for them to tell you that you haven't done anything that warrants a violation.  In some instances, like what we think has happened to us, people will troll (incessantly report you or try to rip down) your account and report you until you receive a wrongful violation, and after so many times, that concludes in a wrongful ban. 

 

 

If TikTok is trying to display videos for a younger audience, they should have filters on the app as every other one has, but if TikTok is looking to appeal to everyone, we as creators should be allowed to post videos and not worry about our hours of work being ripped down over something insignificant. 

 

Again, once we have collected enough signatures, we will present TikTok with this to make sure that they see there are MANY people who are going through this and need a way to express (and not through a bot chat) that they are having trouble with their accounts and sometimes (if not most of the time) being wrongfully banned and years of work pulled down for nothing. Please help us prove our point! We as creators do not want to give up our time, energy, creativity, and accounts all for someone to be able to rip it down in the blink of an eye. Viewers who love seeing their favorite creators on TikTok deserve to keep watching the content they admire and love. Help us make a change. Help us change the terms and policies of TikTok so that we can continue doing what makes us and others happy and other creators can do the same! 

 

Something has to give here and TikTok needs to understand creators like us and others as well as viewers, are bringing them good money too. Ripping us off of the app is no help to them either. Make a change by providing a signature! Let’s tell TikTok it is time to rewrite the terms and policies! 

 

Share with friends, share on social, put the link on a story, and let’s get the ball rolling!