To whom it may concern, 

Recently, a lot of creators, including myself, have had issues with being banned on TikTok. In April, I had an account banned shortly after hitting 100K followers. Now let me be frank, I do not have an issue with the fact that my account was banned. I am a recovering addict so I can see how my content could be considered controversial. My issue is with the uncertainty that comes from TikTok not being clear about what it takes to get banned. Right now, I have an account now with 223K followers, and I've spent two weeks of the last month banned from posting, going live, commenting, messaging, and editing my bio.

The first week I was banned, I had three videos taken down for community guideline violations, which I then appealed, and won the appeals for all of them. TikTok still did not lift my ban for the remainder of the week. The day after the ban was lifted, I had a video removed for community guideline violations, which resulted in being banned for another week. That very same day, I was banned from going live for a week due to a community guideline violation during the live. I wasn't talking about anything bad on the live and yet I was still banned. To test TikTok, I went on my backup account, which only has 3K, and I tried saying every curse word I could think of to get banned, but I did not. This showed me that anytime a video is taken down, or a live is banned, it's due to people mass reporting it. I am convinced that it does not matter what you say, if enough people see your content, a lot of the time it's going to get taken down. 

I am not asking for TikTok to change its system other than being more transparent about the rules. There have been countless other accounts with videos that are much more family-friendly than mine, that have been banned entirely without really any sort of warning. I am grateful for TikTok and the truly amazing community that it has connected me with, but it has come to a point where I am nervous to post anything or go live. Without a better understanding of the rules, it seems as if every post could be the one that gets my account banned permanently. 

Having an account banned is upsetting. Many of us spend countless hours producing content only to have it removed due to mass reporting. Again, I am not asking TikTok to change their community guidelines, I am simply asking that they are more transparent when it comes to having an account banned permanently. 

These are my solutions:

• Let us know how many strikes we have until our accounts are banned permanently
• Make it harder for videos/lives to be reported. It's too easy for people to report content simply because they don't like the person
• Work on the appeals system. If my videos pass their appeals, they should not be treated as strikes against my account. 
• Make the appeal process faster. While I was banned from going live for a week, TikTok did not even review my appeal until the week was almost over