In July, TikTok brought in a new system on its short video platform that automatically blocks videos that violate its policies. This has had a detrimental effect on many cryptocurrency influencers who use the platform to broadcast their views on the digital currency. This has made some of them consider leaving the platform as their videos are repeatedly getting taken down.
TikTok, whose parent company is ByteDance, recently brought in changes to its branded content policy. The updated policy does not allow users to promote financial services such as cryptocurrencies unless they disclose it through a special option for branded content in the app.
CNBC interviewed 11 cryptocurrency creators who said that their content was educational but was still getting flagged or was removed permanently by the app. TikTok gave little explanation for the reasons why it was flagged or permanently removed. These influencers also said that the number of views and new followers had also decreased, since.
Some of the creators said that they were considering a shift to other social media platforms including Google’s YouTube, Facebook’s Instagram and Twitter as well as chat app Discord. Most of the creators said that they made the videos for fun or to educate and they never explicitly asked users to buy a coin.
Some of them said that received payments that ranged from $300 to $20,000 depending on the number of people who followed them. They got paid in regular currency and sometimes got paid in cryptocurrency.
When CNBC contacted TikTok for comment, the company declined to comment but a spokesperson pointed the agency towards their community guidelines page. The spokesperson refused to say which specific guidelines were violated by the crypto creators.
Although these influencers are considering a move that will take them away from TikTok and towards the older video platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, most of them agree that going viral overnight on TikTok is the ultimate. No other video platform can offer such a boost, to any influencer, as yet.
