TikTok moderation has pushed some news creators to the limit

Page is not the only news content creator struggling. Many creators describe in TikTok videos and elsewhere the platform’s inconsistent moderation and their struggle to get clear answers as to why their content is being removed and/or stifled.

More than half of news influencers on TikTok have accounts on four or more other sites, according to a 2024 study from Pew research. That number may increase significantly as the major TikTok deal has officially closed. It establishes an America-owned venture of the Chinese tech company ByteDance’s app, with 80.1% of ownership shared by a consortium of investors that includes private equity group Silver Lake, American tech company Oracle, and MGX, a company started by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund.

If the last year or so is any indication, creators may see even more changes to the platform’s moderation, algorithm, and engagement.

Quick success that’s hard to maintain

There are dozens of more traditional journalists and publishers using TikTok to engage with new viewers like The Washington Post, CNN’s Max Foster and several BBC presenters. But social-only news creators like Page, Aaron Parnas (4.7 million followers), and V Spehar/Under The Desk News (3.7 million followers) built their followings from the ground up on TikTok, and they’ve seen how it’s changed over the last few years.

Parnas, who was a lawyer before becoming a full-time news content creator last year, has felt the burn of TikTok’s moderation before. “The platform actually banned my initial account,” he told Digiday. He never found out why.

Luckily, Parnas was able to grow a second account to 4.7 million people within a year, thanks in large part to TikTok being a tailored platform for news because of the speed at which videos can be posted, the bite-sized bits of information that can be distributed, and the proliferation of lower-quality content that can be edited in-app.

But the swift growth and ease of creation on the platform don’t mean much if moderation isn’t clear, engagement peaks and valleys seem nonsensical, and government squabbles lead to things like Project Texas, the initiative to secure U.S. data on TikTok within the country, that V Spehar of Under the Desk News said led to platform inconsistencies last December.

“A bunch of my old videos are now going viral, even though I made them months ago. My entire For You Page at various points since December has been old videos…and then, especially over the past few months, I’ve gotten a lot more content strikes, a lot more efforts to slow down my content in terms of pushing it in the For You page,” Parnas told Digiday. 

These fluctuations to the platform mean a consistent revenue stream can get blown up overnight, as seen with Dylan Page.

European influencer marketing platform Kolsquare pulled numbers for Digiday, and noted that Page’s engagement rate has fallen by “roughly one percentage point over the past three months, placing [it] in the average-to-moderate range for creators at his scale.” Based on his channel’s previous performance, this is “notably low.” And when coupled with Page’s claims that he’s only making £10 (around $13.50) per 1 million views and Kolsquare data showing his content generates an Earned Media Value (EMV) of $1.3 million in three months.

“He’s creating significant content for the platform, but not being paid for it,” a Kolsquare spokesperson said. Neither Page nor TikTok responded to a request for comment.

Creators may see revenue falling, but TikTok’s seems just fine. Even as some creators see their revenue fall TikTok itself remains a financial juggernaut, with annual revenues in the tens of billions, driven largely by advertising and commerce. Creator direct payouts from the platform vary across its programs but now pays roughly $0.40-$1.00 per 1,000 views under its main rewards program.

TikTok’s tick-tock

“The glory days of TikTok don’t exist anymore,” Spehar told Digiday. “The amount of money that TikTok pays creators has significantly declined and that’s going to de-incentivize folks… Big creators used to have an internal TikTok creator manager that helped them grow and gave you analytics.” Those managers would also help creators whose content had been struck. They no longer exist.

Last August, the company laid off hundreds of content moderators, telling the Financial Times that “over 85% of content taken down from its platform for violating its guidelines is identified and removed by AI.”

“TikTok support is awful,” Parnas said. “You’re just talking to an AI or some kind of chatbot.” 

TikTok’s Creator Academy states that there’s a “system” in place that provides “clear and consistent moderation.” If creators “post content that violates [its] policies, the content will be removed and [their] account will accrue a strike.” Meeting the “threshold of strikes” will result in a permanent ban.

But the three creators Digiday spoke with said moderation is unclear and inconsistent, and almost impossible to successfully appeal in-app.

“There’s been a lot of really heavy-handed moderation on TikTok,” independent technology and culture journalist Taylor Lorenz told Digiday. “It’s becoming almost impossible to talk about news because you say the wrong word and you’re basically punished.” And the appeal system? “It’s useless,” Lorenz said.

Both Lorenz and Spehar spoke to TikTok’s dwindling staff numbers, with Lorenz calling the platform “hollowed out” and Spehar saying it’s “run by a skeleton crew.” And though the AI content moderation is likely catching some of the worst content, it can be weaponized by bad actors. 

“You can get a right-wing bot campaign that flags a creator’s videos as all branded content, which is the most common one. That’s a violation,” Spehar explained. “You get a strike, even if it’s not, you can appeal it, but there’s no person to contact there that’s reviewing it it would be impossible to have a person review everything, which is why the creator managers used to be so helpful.”

Lorenz thinks that the moderation is too strict and too concerned with removing misinformation, and that preoccupation is being used to falsely flag journalists on the platform.

“It’s gonna get so much worse,” Lorenz said of the incoming ownership change.

Diversify, diversify, diversify

Creators are mindful of the need to diversify where they create and share content. “I’m investing significantly more heavily in YouTube,” said Lorenz, who also runs the User Mag Substack. “I post a clip of my podcast on TikTok every day…it’s the most useless of platforms. Posting every day on YouTube Shorts, I’m not going mega viral…but it pushes people to my long-form videos.”

Spehar is also building out their YouTube presence by creating proprietary content for the platform, and looking to Meta to make up for losses felt on TikTok. “At the same time TikTok was becoming less profitable, Meta became more profitable,” they said. “I make decent money on Facebook of all places just syndicating my TikToks over there.”

CEO of influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy Ed East echoed similar sentiments when asked about the TikTok deal: “For creators, those with strong cross-platform presence, ‘owned’ communities and an ability to demonstrate commercial impact will continue to command a premium as brands seek reliability.”

For news creators, the app that seemed tailor-made for their content now may seem like a trap.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m at war with the platform that is supposed to be my ally,” Page said in the video announcing his departure from the app.