The world’s most popular video-sharing app has been in the news a lot lately. From worries over its addictive qualities to concerns about Chinese government surveillance, rarely a day goes by without another headline. With TikTok being the world’s biggest gatekeeper to viral fame, those achieving it often don’t expect what’s coming next. For many, there’s a flood of hateful insults, sexist abuse, impersonation, and harassment coming their way, including death threats. Indeed, there are thousands of angry viewers who hate what content creators say, how they look, or who they are. This is particularly pronounced for influencers, celebrities, and TikTok stars who attract trolls and harassers like moths to a flame. Rightfully, they demand action to stop TikTok harassment.
For some, harassment even turns from a one-off comment into cyberstalking and other persistent forms of online abuse. Stopping such harassment starts with holding perpetrators accountable, but how do you know who you are dealing with? Cybertrace is aware of a growing number of cases of direct and indirect harassment via anonymous or imitation TikTok accounts. In previous articles, we have examined social media harassment in general as well as on Facebook and Instagram. Now it is time to turn our attention to TikTok. Let’s explore common types of abuse on the app, available responses, and how Cybertrace’s investigations can help stop TikTok harassment.
Types of TikTok Harassment
Hateful comments
Harassment, abuse, and impersonation on TikTok come in a variety of forms. At the most basic level, users may leave hurtful and harmful comments on videos for any number of reasons. It may be because they genuinely dislike a video, are jealous of its creator or because they enjoy trolling others. In fact, the speed and virality of the app encourage unfiltered emotional responses, and anger/fear/rage are strong emotions.
Abusive videos
One step up from leaving abusive comments is the creation of abusive videos that explicitly belittle, degrade, or defame others. Some users create abusive reaction videos using the app’s Duet feature that tries to piggyback off a viral video. In doing so, some trolls simulate hanging or suffocating themselves to the sound of the original video. These videos can be extremely distressing to the original video’s creator.
Impersonation accounts
Then there are fake impersonation accounts that impersonate a celebrity or influencer. Using the influencer’s name, they post defamatory videos or post hateful comments on other videos including extremely racist or sexist ones. As a result, others will believe that these are the unsuspecting victim’s own words and start calling them out without knowing that it’s an impersonation.
Pile-ons
Ultimately, this impersonation can result in people hounding a victim on completely spurious and untrue grounds. Sadly, the mob mentality behind a TikTok pile-on can have devastating consequences. Not only are victims of pile-ons unfairly abused on TikTok but the harassment expands to other spheres of their lives as well, resulting in ruined reputations, livelihoods, and mental health. It is vital to stop TikTok harassment before it spirals out of control.
What Can I Do to Stop TikTok Harassment?
As with other social media platforms, TikTok harassment victims have the option to mute, block or report offenders. For minor annoyances, the first two are definitely an easy way out. For abusive or harassing behaviour, reporting the offending account to TikTok is another possibility. TikTok claims that it deletes about 1% of all uploaded videos and comments due to hateful speech. Unfortunately, this is just a drop in the ocean and doesn’t get anywhere near the size of the abuse problem. Furthermore, it also takes TikTok significant time to investigate and delete an offending account (up to three weeks). Finally, nothing stops the deleted perpetrator from simply setting up another account within minutes. What, then, can be done to stop TikTok harassment and hold perpetrators accountable for their despicable deeds? If you are fed up with harassers behaving with near impunity, thankfully there is another option.
How Does a Cybertrace Investigation Stop TikTok Harassment and Impersonation?
Utilising Cybertrace’s professional and experienced cyber investigators allows victims to turn the tables and track down, identify, and unmask TikTok harassers. Our social media investigations have a great track record in detecting IP addresses or other identifying details. Once you know who is behind the online harassment, you can then take action via your lawyers or the police. Conversely, you can’t hold anyone accountable if you don’t know who they are. In order to track, uncover, and stop TikTok harassment, Cybertrace uses a combination of technical investigative techniques. Our team of cyberbullying investigation experts is constantly developing new tools to expose online harassers. By always staying ahead of the latest legal and technological developments, we are constantly improving our ability to pinpoint information.
Investigative methods include content analysis, identifying linked contact details, investigations of suspects, sophisticated tracking, and social engineering, to name a few. Cybertrace has also developed its own highly specialised tools with the capability to deploy through social media platforms to extract user information, such as an IP address, mobile device type, and any other data which can be used to identify the offender. These constantly updated tools were designed in-house by Cybertrace’s development team and are not used by any other investigators. Instead, they remain one of Cybertrace’s leading tools to find out who is behind a fake or anonymous cyberbullying profile. It is possible to stop TikTok harassment – contact Cybertrace today to discuss how we can help.
