Social media platform TikTok has released new rules that Cambodia’s growing army of TikTok content creators must adhere to.

On Thursday, TikTok released its refreshed community guidelines outlining the rules and standards required to be part of the TikTok community, which now boasts about 7.4 million users in Cambodia and more than one billion worldwide.

In a statement announcing the new rules, Julie de Bailliencourt, TikTok’s Global Head of Product Policy, said, “For the first time, TikTok is sharing TikTok's Community Principles to help people understand its decisions about how it works to keep TikTok safe and build trust in its approach. These principles are based on TikTok’s commitment to uphold human rights and aligned with international legal frameworks.”

She added, “These principles guide TikTok’s decisions about how it moderates content so that it can strive to be fair in its actions, protect human dignity, and strike a balance between freedom of expression and preventing harm.”

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To update the framework, TikTok consulted more than 100 organisations worldwide, including its US Content Advisory Council, and members of its community. The input helped the platform strengthen its rules and respond to new threats and potential harms.

Key changes include advancing the platform’s rules on how it treats synthetic media, which is content created or modified by AI technology; adding 'tribe' as a protected attribute in TikTok’s hate speech and hateful behaviour policies; and more detail about TikTok’s work to protect civic and election integrity, including its approach to government, politician and political party accounts.

The new Community Guidelines will be enforced from April 21. To ensure the social media platform’s team of moderators can enforce the rules as they start to be rolled out, they will receive training in the coming months.

TikTok has also overhauled how it organises its rules thematically into different topics. For example, behaviour and mental health. For each of these, TikTok offers a brief explanation about what it does not allow and the range of actions it can take.

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“TikTok takes a whole village to keep people safe online, so it is grateful to everyone in the TikTok community and to all of the external experts who have contributed and continue to help the platform advance its rules and stay a step ahead of emerging threats,” de Bailliencourt added.

“TikTok believes that everyone deserves to feel safe online, and that feeling safe is key to unlocking imagination and creative expression. That's why the platform continues to invest in its work to keep TikTok a safe, inclusive, and authentic home for its global community, so that they can create, discover and connect.”

According to data published in January 2023 by OOSGA, there are about 7.4 million TikTok users in Cambodia, with 46.5 percent male and 53.5 percent female.

marissa.carruthers@kiripost.com