TikTok needs to educate their moderation team on targeted bullying of Gypsy/Traveller kids

 

Formally recognised as an ethnic minority by the Irish government. Members of the travelling community (Mincéirí) have been subject to discrimination for many decades. 

 

Online bullying is unfortunately a regular experience for young people from the Traveller communities. It is particularly severe on the TikTok platform where troll accounts and slurs run rampant. 

 

The usage of ethnic slurs targeted towards Traveller people on TikTok is a sight that's all too common, especially for actual people from the the Traveller community. Taunts such as "I saw your house on the motorway today", "Can I have my gates/bike back please" etc. Even emoji icons are used to discriminate such as the pie and key emojis which is another way of saying the very offensive p word. The phrase "do as they likies" is used in reference to the p word also. TikTok currently allows all of this on it's platform. They must do better. 

 

Troll accounts are profiles that upload stolen pictures and videos from young girls/women's actual online profiles, with the intent to impersonate and smear. This happens in the form of 'photo editing' and 'bio text'. 

 

The selfie photos are edited so the girls/women's skin tone appears darker. This is done in conjunction with hashtags such as #blackqueen. The bio text of these troll accounts never specifiy that they are fake. Instead they include deliberately race baiting language. 

 

This in turn indicates to the viewer that the girls in the videos are blackfishing. Blackfishing is the when someone alters their physical appearence to make it seem like they have black heritage or are racially ambiguous. 

 

These troll accounts are problematic for the Traveller and black community. They are set up with the sole purpose to mock Travellers and incite cyber bullying. When sites are overrun by troll accounts they drown out the voices of real people in these communities but Tiktok refuses to remove these accounts.

 

The end result of this is young Traveller people feeling shamed, emotionally & psychologically assaulted. Also as a consequence of this, non Traveller people are fed a false narrative that invokes anger and ultimately, misunderstanding.

 

We call on TikTok to contact the various Traveller specific charities so that their moderation teams can receive appropriate education regarding Traveller specific bullying on their platform and also receive guidance which will enable TikTok to revise their Community Guidelines. 

 

You can help us achieve this by signing this petition, sharing on social media and by using the hashtag #Travellerbullying