Okay, this is not a video I ever thought I'd be making, but I think it's the right time to just put it all out there. You see, I have been creating content on Tik Tok for the last 5 years. I have posted thousands of videos, generated tens of billions of views. I've got 18 million followers on the platform. Hell, last month I was at Bite Dance's headquarters all the way over in China. But in that time, I have noticed some truly strange things that I've never witnessed on any other platform. >> Tik Tok actually decides what news reaches viewers and which news doesn't. >> What Tik Tok is doing is against EU law. >> And I'll be honest, for the longest time, I didn't want to share any of this publicly because it is literal self-sabotage. You see, according to Tik Tok's own terms and conditions, which you can read, it's in plain English, you may not make any derogatory public comment or statement concerning Tik Tok, or else you can be removed from their creator rewards program and never make money on the platform again. So, we better make this one count. In my hand is a three-page response directly from Tik Tok containing information, some of which has never been made publicly available. And for the Tik Tok employees I know that are watching this right now, I promise this is for the greater good of the platform. Now in my other hand, we have accounts from whistleblowers who are sharing their concerns and insights about Tik Tok, its moderation. And again, some of this information has never been made publicly available. And lastly, we have also spoken to some of the platform's largest creators, hearing their experiences for the first time. And spoiler on that one, I think some of your favorite Tik Tockers might be making a lot less money than you think. Now, with that being said, I want to stress the purpose of this video and what we're about to get into is not to bash Tik Tok. I happen to like the platform and I want to see it thrive. But some serious problems need to be highlighted that are forcing some of the platform's largest and upand cominging creators off of the platform for good. And I don't want that to happen. So, I think we should stop the yapping and let's get cracking. [Music] >> Hey, bud. >> Just uh heading there now. >> All right. >> I have sank years into that. like literal years of making content every single day, posting a bunch of times. I wake up one morning and they literally they put up a notification. They say your account is permanently banned. Being a content creator in general is risky enough, let alone being on a platform that is sporadically banning people for they don't even explain why. They just you're gone. >> First of all, I'm so glad you're doing this video. I for a long time didn't know how my experience compared to other people's experiences on Tik Tok. >> Do not stay on one platform. My god, I stuck on Tik Tok for years. That's all I cared about. When I got banned, I was going to definitely stuck sat there with you went from loads of money or whatever money you're making to zero overnight. And it it takes a lot to to start again. Trust me. Okay, let's start with how I got here because last week I don't think I ever expected to be posting this video. It pains me to say this, but guys, I am leaving Tik Tok for a few days. The censorship on this platform is getting out of hand. Yeah, that video was right after one of the biggest news stories of the decade broke. And when I went to go and cover it, I experienced an abnormal amount of videos getting taken down. We're talking five videos in 2 days either entirely taken off the platform or their newer moderation technique ineligible for recommendation. And these graphs are what that looks like for the video. So, it's essentially the same as removing a video entirely because no one sees it anymore. Now, let me be very clear. This was not the content's problem. Every single platform that I posted this video on had zero issues with it. And when they did take these videos down, they didn't give a reason apart from community guidelines. And look, as I mentioned, I have posted thousands of videos on this app. And if this was just this one-time thing, I would write it off. I'll say whatever. Let's not make a big deal of it. Move on with my life. But it was not a one-time thing. This is off of the back of Tik Tok attempting to permanently ban my account for reasons I only found out today, almost a year later, and we'll talk about that. They have dropped my RPM down to the lowest amount possible on this app. This graph is it just in this year of it dropping to abysmal 0.01. And sometimes when Tik Tok removes a video of mine, they will block me from the appeals process by glitching the page. And my concerns only grew when a Dutch news organization reached out to me saying that they were experiencing similar issues, too. The thing that really caught my eye is that you said it's potentially illegal under EU law that they are doing this. >> Um, and so that was really like, wo, okay, I I didn't know we were going that far. So, >> I mean, here's how crazy it's got over the years. There are times when my video on my page would look like it's fine. It's got a million views or so, but if you go on someone else's account, that video for them does not exist. We are talking about videos mysteriously disappearing without any notification from Tik Tok that its visibility has been limited. Now, there are certain laws against that which we will get into further in the video, but it's particularly gaslighting for the creator because you're then told, "Oh, it's just a a bad video." >> Tik Tok removed some of our videos without notifying us or giving us the opportunity to object. Recently, Tik Tok um took down a video about the Dutch government uh campaign be prepared, which helped citizens prepare for possible emergency situations. And what Tik Tok said really worried me because they told us that we were spreading misinformation and we really didn't understand why because we're in news organization. We're checking >> information was from the government as well. >> From the government. Yeah. When Tik Tok deletes videos at random or shadowbanss them, Tik Tok actually decides what news reaches viewers and which news doesn't. I think this is really troubling because Tik Tok isn't a journalist. It isn't actually fit to decide what is what's newsworthy or not. >> But it was after this Venezuela reporting where things took a really wild turn to take us to where we are today. At this point, almost every video that I was putting on the platform was making me a loss. it was becoming harder to justify spending hours and days on research and editing just for a video to get taken down. So yeah, I did kind of reach a breaking point. I made a video and I said, I'm going to be stepping back for a few days to focus on other platforms like YouTube. And honestly, I had no idea where this video was going to go. It blew up in ways I couldn't even imagine. 26,000 comments, 150,000 shares, 2.9 million likes. I had no idea that many people would relate to a post like this. I started getting hundreds of messages from other creators telling me their experiences. Accounts with millions of followers were commenting things on this post like, "Yep, I'm so sorry. This app is completely different now. I understand. I lost my 5.8 million Tik Tok account due to a helicopter video. I left that platform after hitting 9.8 million and experienced the same thing." These are full-time creators with millions of followers. this is their job and they're choosing or getting pushed off the platform. And for the longest time, I kind of thought that I was experiencing this because I was covering news, political content, etc. But after I posted that video and got this feedback, I started to think if everyone is experiencing something similar, then there has to be a bigger story here. And that is when I reached out to Tik Tok to see what they would say about some of these issues. And it's crazy. Let's get into that. Okay, let's go through the parts of their response that really stood out to me. Firstly, I asked them why my account was permanently banned earlier last year, and they said that I temporarily connected to a Wi-Fi network which was previously used by an account with a lot of violations. Now, that for me was more shocking than if my content was against their guidelines because remember, I got banned without the ability to appeal. So, imagine if I didn't have the reach that I have to get in contact with someone at Tik Tok and sort this out. I may have never got my account back for something as simple as connecting to a Wi-Fi network at the Airbnb that you're staying at. Just imagine Tik Tok being your full-time job and your account gets removed overnight for something as simple as connecting to Wi-Fi, things you can't even protect against. What happened? I went on the app like normal and a little like information bar popped up and basically just said that I need to edit my profile because uh I'm posing as another person or an organization in a confusing way. But anyway, I I obviously I couldn't edit my profile. I tried to appeal it and then one day just went on the on the app and they um they say your account has been permanently banned. They just would not let me access my account. Just disappeared. >> Just because you looked and sounded like me. >> I assumed so, but they never really gave an explanation for that. Bam. Wiped out in a day. Just permanently deleted. What? And then there's nothing you can do. You can't. I tried appealing. They're like, "Appeal denied. >> What could you do?" >> So, that was pretty shocking. Secondly, I asked why five of my reports on the Venezuela situation were removed. and they said that one of my posts, this one is crazy, one of my posts was shared by another user and that user was wrongfully moderated by Tik Tok. As a result, the original video, which was my video, got penalized with the same result. So, at this point, I'm thinking now I've got to worry about the millions of people who share my videos daily, and that could end up causing my videos to get taken down. I mean, it's starting to feel like you can breathe wrong on this platform and your content can get removed. >> Yeah. So, my Tik Tok got banned recently. I I was doing it for about six, seven years full time. Long story short, they banned me over a video of myself flying over New York City with my legs off the helicopter. >> Did they give you a reason when that video got taken down? >> Dangerous activities. You got your seatelt on, you got a harness on. You know, there's many others uh videos like it. And I tried to explain that to them, but they they told me no matter how many times I email them, the um outcome will not change. >> Now, in their defense, they also disclosed to me that a staggering 100 million videos get uploaded to Tik Tok daily. And I'll be honest, that is some serious scale that they have to moderate. And they said in just 3 months last year, 186 million videos were removed. That's an average of 2 million videos per day. But here's where things get scary because yesterday I also spoke with an anonymous source and they asked not to be named for legal reasons and they told me this. >> Tik Tok automation teams they've sacked them all. I know some of them personally. So what happened is that they've used our moderation team to train their AI tools. They've sacked them to save money and now moderation mistakes are happening left, right, and center. The result is that this platform is now being moderated incorrectly. People hate AI. Now, this is a good example of AI and a recent human event. >> Now, it's not just my source telling me this. Sky News, they spoke to three whistleblowers from the UK's moderation team, and they said that more than 400 online safety workers have agreed to leave the company with allegedly only five individuals left. Obviously, that places a huge burden on the AI moderation, and Tik Tok have told me that 85% of content removed off of the platform is done so by automation. This guy news is saying that 400. >> Yeah. Yeah. I've been working 4 and a half years. >> 4 and a half years. >> Well, what did they what did they say was the reason? >> They said we will move to another country because it will be much cheaper. >> Do you think they hired 400 more humans or no? >> Multit. >> And it's not just the UK's moderation team. Reuters report that human layoffs and the move towards AI moderation is happening globally. Quote, "The layoffs began the same day as for the teams in Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Africa." And that is where it seems we get to the root of the issue because AI simply doesn't understand context in the same way that humans do. Think that the AI is accurate and capable enough to do what you were doing. AI it will never never will be like a human never for the creator will be like horrible now because they over tagging over banned it comments now in the platform. >> It does not promote fearlessness and it does not let you post anything that is you doing something that it doesn't like. You sat down on the edge of a cliff and you had some lunch and it was super safe. There's no wind or anything. It's like that's promoting dangerous activities and you're a threat to society. And it's like >> that sounds like a machine looking at a situation like that on not understanding the context to the situation and removing it. >> I consistently get comments almost every video, as a matter of fact, these days are filled with comments just saying, "I've been following you for years and I haven't seen you in forever. Why don't I see you anymore?" And it's frustrating cuz I don't know what's different from the content that used to go viral. It's still going viral on Instagram, on Facebook, on other platforms. And now Tik Tok's become like one of my least favorite platforms because of that. So you see, to me, Tik Tok feels like a platform that has grown so quickly that its infrastructure couldn't even keep up. And as a result, it feels like they are over relying on AI and technology to moderate. And I have a pretty hilarious example of that. So when I stood back from Tik Tok, I decided to post uh this video to the platform and it was basically just a little jab at Tik Tok saying, "Hey, this is the kind of content you want me posting, right? Instead of important news, dancing away with KSI and Newsb." And it's just some AI slop. But the thing is that got taken down for weapons. So I appealed it cuz obviously there's no weapons in there. and they denied it and gave my account a strike for that. If you get more than three strikes, your entire account can be banned. So, that was clearly not a human looking at that. And as a result, you know, it put my entire account in jeopardy. And here's the thing, I'm tempted to give Tik Tok grace for things like that. You know, they've got a 100 million videos being uploaded per day. But on the other hand, I want to take that grace back because every single person that I've ever spoken to say the only platform that they face these kinds of moderation issues is, you guessed it, Tik Tok. Have you ever had any videos that have been taken down from Tik Tok and also taken down on similar platforms? Is Tik Tok the only one? >> Tik Tok is the only one. Yeah. >> So that video that ultimately got you banned, did that post get taken down on any other platform? No, no, >> no. That's that's the thing, Mike. No else. >> That leads us to the assumption that Tik Tok is doing something differently and that thing that they are doing differently is not working. >> But it might be worse than just not working. It might be actually breaking some laws >> called uh the European Media Freedom Act. So according to this act uh a platform should inform a news organization that they want to delete a video and why and then there should be an option to appeal this decision and Tik Tok isn't doing that. It completely operates on its own. This is also interesting. So the same law also addresses shadow banning. Basically a platform the EU isn't allowed to shadowban a video without prior notice and consultation. Tik Tok is actually breaking that law. And when I spoke to one of the former moderators Tik Tok made redundant, they said the company has the ability to reduce visualization of a post if that video violates a non-serious policy, but they don't notify a user in this case and the the user doesn't get notified of that. >> No. >> Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, absolutely fine. Um I posted Tik Tok gone. Now the company I work with, it was a promo. I was promoting the helicopter rad in exchange for the rad and they said to me they've it's it's never been this bad. Like we've never had this issue before. So Tik Tok is changing dramatically and it's getting to the point where no one wants to be on the app anymore. >> But honestly, we don't know what exactly that is. It's a mystery. And that's like one of the main points that I want to make. Tik Tok is a company that is just shrouded in mystery. When I was over at Bite Dance's headquarters, this is what they said. So how many people work at Tik Tok in in here? >> We uh generally we don't know the exact number >> because uh the structure of the of the company it's like a mystery. >> I was told by one of the coders at by Dance of course off the record that not even he fully understands what is going on with their algorithm and I don't know maybe that makes the whole situation a lot worse. We don't know a lot about Tik Tok. What have you found so far that's been surprising, alarming? >> The first thing really surprised me that this Tik Tok insider told us about the algorithm that it's a complete black box. No one can really put their finger on how it's how it works. >> That brings us to the money. So, excuse the uh crazy scene change, but uh we are shooting another video in Canada and this is an entire frozen lake. Um and we we still need to finish this Tik Tok video up. I think we were talking about monetization and ironically speaking about that, the only reason we are able to, you know, shoot out here is because of YouTube. before we started YouTube. Um, it doesn't make any sense to come all the way out here and shoot videos like this for short form because, you know, you could post your video and it could be taken down. Like seriously, imagine coming all the way out to Canada to shoot this crazy video and it gets taken down by the moderation team or, you know, you don't get paid anything. 1 cent per,000 views, it doesn't make any sense. And I think a lot of people were surprised when they found out that I was making 1 cent RPM, which is the lowest amount possible. But the thing is, it wasn't always like this. As you can see from this graph, like it has been a steady decline even from this year. It was doing pretty well and now it's just been this slow steady decline to abysmal levels. And the craziest part is that I've heard a lot of creators speaking about this that recently there has just been this drop in the amount that Tik Tok is paying. And to be honest, when I asked Tik Tok if there is any truth to this one, they didn't really specify. They didn't answer that question. They just gave me this long, you know, roundabout way of saying this is how creators get paid and this is how much a video is worth to advertisers, which is all publicly available. What they did deny though is that there was a 30 video limit on how much you can get paid. But the thing is is like we don't really know one how much Tik Tok is earning and two how much they are actually sharing of what they earn with their creators. And look, I'm not going to stand here and say that, you know, Tik Tok should be paying its creators more. I actually do think that it's a genuinely tough problem to sort out and fix on short form. And that is the problem. It's short form that is the problem. But what I can tell you is that I got paid more with 3 million views on long form on YouTube than I did 300 million views on Tik Tok. That was a wakeup call for me. And I was like, this is not sustainable. And actually, YouTuber Mark Jones made a really good point on this topic. >> I was just at the Tik Tok awards. I met a super talented Tik Tocker, 600K followers, getting tens of millions of views, and she was still working a full-time job while living with her parents. Now, I'm not sharing this to shame her. I'm sharing this to illustrate a problem. 80 to 90% of the short form creators I meet are starving artists. And I think that's what really worries me about the social media space right now. I think Tik Tok came along and unintentionally broke the creator economics. you know, they became so successful that every other platform, including YouTube, Instagram, and they copied the hell out of Tik Tok. And because of that, you've got this whole new generation of creators that are exclusively short form, that are getting millions and millions of views. Everyone knows their names, but they are hardly making any money, or at least not as much as you would expect them to be. They all talk about how jealous they are of long form creators. Short form content is just so much less sustainable. The ad revenue sucks. The conversion rates terrible, sponsors won't pay as much for it. And in the past, we've seen extreme versions of what can happen when content creation becomes less sustainable. Platforms like Vine didn't die because viewers stop watching. They died because creators got sick of getting millions of views while still struggling to make ends meet. And that's the thing. That is exactly why I had to start prioritizing YouTube. It's harder, but the payoff once you actually make it is a lot greater. You can start putting more weight into your videos. And that's the thing. YouTube's profit split with their creators is the sole reason why creators like Speed, Mr. Beast, the Sidemen exist. The short form equivalent simply doesn't. They're able to make their money, reinvest that money back into their content, and now they're honestly competing with the likes of Hollywood production studios. And that's why when a creator gets really big on Tik Tok, they end up just wanting to leave to YouTube because it only makes sense. So, there is this talent vacuum on Tik Tok, which honestly, it's sad to see. And and I really want there to be a thriving place where you can make money and continue on short form on TikTok. But yeah, uh I mean it it's a tricky problem as I said uh but I really need a piece. So let's cut to the next scene. So what happens now? Well, I feel like I've been creating on the platform for such a long time and now it finally feels like I've said everything that I've wanted to say. It's very clear that there is a big problem for creators on Tik Tok. right now and I genuinely hope that this video can inspire something to change because I love Tik Tok and I want to see it thrive. I want to continue thriving on Tik Tok as well. And for those of you Tik Tok employees watching this right now, I hope that you see this video as a way of your creators caring enough about the platform to say something and want something to change and not just let it die off like Vine or something like that. But I also acknowledge that maybe that's not always going to be the way that this is going to be seen. And um I don't know where we go from here. I don't know what Tik Tok is going to look like for News Daddy uh for the for the coming years. But yeah, as always though, let me know what your guys' thoughts are in the comments. I'm going to continue uh shooting YouTube videos right now. As you can see, we are out shooting an amazing video. So, I thought we'd give you guys something to look at and um hopefully see you on TikTok soon. Something about me has changed. Something about me has changed. I'm sleeping just fine without you.