Under this policy, TikTok moderators were explicitly told to suppress uploads from users with flaws both congenital and inevitable. “Abnormal body shape,” “ugly facial looks,” dwarfism, and “obvious beer belly,” “too many wrinkles,” “eye disorders,” and many other “low quality” traits are all enough to keep uploads out of the algorithmic fire hose. Videos in which “the shooting environment is shabby and dilapidated,” including but “not limited to … slums, rural fields” and “dilapidated housing” were also systematically hidden from new users, though “rural beautiful natural scenery could be exempted,” the document notes.

The document, presented in both English and Chinese, advised TikTok’s moderators that for videos shot in someone’s house with “no obvious slummy charactor [sic],” special care should be given to check for slummy features such as a “crack on the wall” or “old and disreputable decorations.” The mere appearance of residential disrepair or crooked teeth in the frame, the document shows, could mean the difference between worldwide distribution and relative invisibility.

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Gartner, the TikTok spokesperson, told The Intercept that “the policies mentioned appear to be the same or similar to those published by” German publication Netzpolitik in December in a story about how TikTok was artificially suppressing access to videos created by disabled, overweight, and LGBT users and represented an effort “at preventing bullying, but are no longer in place, and were already out of use when The Intercept obtained them.”

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A “Personal live broadcast about state organs such as police office, military etc,” would knock your stream offline for three days, while documenting military or police activity would get you kicked off for that day (would-be protestors, take note).

Gartner refused to clarify whether the substance and intent of these restrictions are still in effect under different phrasing, for example, whether there is any current rule whatsoever against “harming national honor” or documenting police movements.

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