My name is Veronica and I’ve been a TikTok creator since 2019. On Wednesday, March 9, 2022 my account with 228,000 followers was unjustly banned permanently due to mass reporting and targeted harassment. On the afternoon of March 9th, 2022, I made a new account and less than 24 hours later that account was also banned- without having any content violations & without warning- due to targeted harassment & mass reporting.

Mass reporting occurs when a group of individuals band together to repeatedly report your account. Their goal is to stifle or suppress your content or get your account permanently banned. Unfortunately after enough people report your account, TikTok’s  contact moderation system will automatically remove or heavily suppress your account. 

Many of the users on TikTok agree that there is a racism issue within TikTok‘s content moderation team. I’ve made several videos on TikTok about this very issue and they were all removed. Tiktok claims that it wants to create a safe space for all cultures & all peoples, but that simply isn’t true and tiktok‘s contact moderation team continues to prove that. 

As an example, before my account was banned I made several videos which were greenscreen duets. I was not in the video and I did not add any extra commentary to the original video. The videos that I posted as greenscreen duets were removed for “hate speech”. I reported the original video and TikTok said that the original videos did not violate any community guidelines, but because I posted it on my page it somehow violated the guidelines— even though it was the same exact video with no extra commentary and no editing. 

If a group of individuals report a single video all for the same reason it doesn’t matter whether or not that video actually violates that specific guideline. TikTok will automatically remove it with enough reports. Though TikTok may restore the content later, it will still penalize your account and put your account in jeopardy. 

At one point tiktok claimed via Instagram post that they were cracking down on mass reporting— this also isn’t true as a problem has only gotten worse. Tiktok has very detailed guidelines about harassment, bullying, and racism but it arbitrarily enforces its guidelines and there Seems to be different sets of rules for different groups of people. 
Before my account was banned I infiltrated a discord server that was created to target and mass report the accounts of prominent black, brown, and indigenous creators on TikTok. My username, unfortunately, happened to be one of many that was put into this discord server to be master reported. 

I along with many others have been reaching out to the community manager on TikTok for months about the issue of mass reporting, targeted harassment, and the racism that runs rampant on this profile. Tiktok often will allow hate speech and content that disparages black, brown, and indigenous people while penalizing the accounts that speak out about the hate speech that TikTok allows on its platform.

I will be highlighting many examples of the double standards of TikToks community guidelines violations within this petition as well as sharing my story and the stories of others that have been the subject of targeted harassment on TikTok. 

We are coming together as a collective, writing this petition in hopes of finally getting TikTok’s  attention, to ask for transparency, and to have an open conversation and give honest feedback about how Tiktok can truly become an inclusive platform. 
I am also asking that TikTok restore my account, @veronicamarzxx, and the accounts listed within this petition. Our accounts were unjustly banned because of mass reporting and tiktok has failed to uphold its promise to make a safe environment as they have pledged in the past. 

Tiktok: this is a call in for you to have an open discussion with your users about the real issues that are affecting your app and why so many users are unhappy and looking to leave your app. 

Discord: this petition is putting you on notice because next we are coming for all of the servers that you allow on your platform where Hate groups docs in target marginalized individuals with the intent to harm them not only online but in real life.

I hope that both Tiktok and Discord are listening and taking in this information, and I hope that they truly do care about making their communities an inclusive and safe space for all and not just for some, like it has been.