TikTok is worse for news producers than Facebook. It doesn’t need to be: Opinion

I’m a big fan of TikTok. I’ve been impressed by the platform since I found my daughter spending too much time on Musical.ly in 2016.

I also think it’s important for news, because it’s where a whole generation hangs out and because the format is actually appropriate for information sharing - unlike some of the other competitors for attention such as gaming or music streaming.

I’ve never subscribed to the notion that content on the platform has to be funny or light, despite having attended countless industry events where I was shown innovative but content-deficient approaches by major news organisations.

At CGTN, with an excellent team, we amassed more than a million followers over a two-year period (it’s now closer to 2 million).

TikTok is powerful. TikTok is useful. And TikTok is relevant. 

So it’s a shame they are currently doing worse at news than Meta. 

That’s a low bar. Meta once made an effort to lure big news brands. It didn’t really build an ecosystem to support a diversity of news content, but it did at least put money and lipservice towards the value of news. Then came the big falling out, lawsuits and legislation that led to a divorce. Instead, Meta pivoted towards creators, using a tiny portion of its earnings to return to those whose efforts make the platform work.

And today it is possible for a news organisation with very tight cost controls to make some (OK not a lot of) money from content licensing on Facebook.

TikTok offers a similar programme, designed to share a measly portion of revenue with those who power the platform with their own content. As a news organisation, we want to be on TikTok because it's an important channel to reach an audience who may not have access to other sources of information. Few media make a serious effort on the platform because the financial returns for doing so are low. But we feel it's part of our mission.

I can understand why TikTok has strict rules about violent or graphic content. I think they should find a way of filtering this content so users can decide if they want to see the realities of conflict or disaster, but I understand why it's easier just to remove everything and play safe. It means we do sanitise and dilute some of our storytelling on TikTok to avoid being blocked.  Not ideal, but understandable.

My problem comes with a much more insidious moderation approach which penalises “unoriginal content”.

Firstly because it doesn’t work: I interviewed the head of Indonesia’s free meals programme - https://www.globalsouthworld.com/article/indonesia-s-free-meals-programme-will-feed-83-million-people-in-2026 - but the interview was flagged as unoriginal on TikTok. Not only does this mean it cannot be monetised, but effectively I get a strike.

But also because it is wrong in principle: We got another unoriginal strike for a video compiling reactions to the US attack on Venezuela (TikTok says this does not include sufficient editing to be considered original content, do take a look and make your own opinion https://www.tiktok.com/@globalsouthworld/video/7591629476258254102). Another strike was given for a video of Donald Trump defending sharing a monkey video of Barack Obama and another for a clip of Egypt’s president at Davos.

And once we had five strikes that was enough to get us banned from the creator rewards programme. From small revenue to no revenue. And that makes a difference. I can understand that TikTok may not feel that running clips such as these is what the creator programme was designed for. It would be fair to exclude them from monetisation. But the entire channel should not be punished for providing serious news content. Channels producing anodyne brain-rot do not run this risk.

I don’t want to see social media banned. I want to see social media improved. Here’s somewhere to start.In an emailed response to questions about their policy, TikTok said the content was not eligible for its creator programme because it did not involve enough editing or because the creator was not appearing in the video (which incidentally is not mentioned in the rewards programme terms https://www.tiktok.com/creator-academy/en/article/creator-rewards-program).

They did not address the policy of blocking the entire channel from the programme on the basis that some videos were ineligible.

Duncan Hooper is consulting editor at Global South World. He previously ran the European newsroom of CGTN and was head of digital at Euronews.