update 1:11 pm ct, Mar 23: on Tuesday night, sansmoney made a new video informing his followers that his audio had been restored. as a result, he deleted his opening rant.
“It’s great that they’re putting it back, but that doesn’t relieve them of a lot of criticism I have with the community guidelines and their management,” he said. our original article is below.
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batman caused a lot of things, but chief among them was the revival of the nirvana song “something in the way” (featured in the movie). Naturally, Next Step is a parody, but on TikTok, one such parody is alleged to have been removed from the platform for violating community guidelines.
The parody was first uploaded by tiktoker @sansmoney on March 10, almost a week after the release of batman, your meme knows. the rather crude parody has sansmoney sitting in a car and turning the steering wheel. with “something in the way” playing in the background, he says, “something’s up my butt, mmmm” and starts shaking as the last letter appears.
caption reads: “me driving to work after shoving my batman action figure up my butt.”
the original tiktok has been viewed over 1 million times, and many people created their own versions using sansmoney’s audio; enough people made their own version of it that a nearly 11 minute compilation video ended up on youtube. the audio was called “something is in my ad”, a less explicit version of what the lyrics say.
but a couple of days ago, sansmoney says tiktok removed his audio because it violated tiktok’s community guidelines and he didn’t have a chance to appeal. in his video, he doesn’t say what guideline he violated, just that it “didn’t make any sense.” In an instagram DM, sansmoney said that “the only reason given for removing the sound was ‘tik tok community guidelines'” adding that while he had had videos removed before, this was the first time tiktok had only removed the sound. Audio.
“That audio was removed from tiktok due to community guideline violations,” it says. “I can’t appeal, and all the videos below that audio, as far as I know, are all gone. I’m extremely frustrated with this because this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. i dont think i need to go into detail why tiktok removed it was very very stupid and made no sense. I’m seriously considering switching platforms because it’s getting extremely frustrating trying to deal with this kind of thing.”
while sansmoney’s original video is still on tiktok, when you click the “something in my ad” audio link, no video appears. instead, he is met with a page that says “this sound is not available”. sansmoney also pointed out someone who extracted his audio (and named it something else), which tiktok hasn’t removed yet.
Screenshots shared with the daily bulletin illustrate sansmoney’s different experiences with community guideline violations. For a violation sent with a video removed, the ability to appeal appears at the bottom of the message. for audio removal, that’s not the case; the area is left blank. but even when it’s possible to appeal a violation of the community guidelines, sansmoney likened the process to flipping a coin.
“I could remove a video that I think could be appealed, but it would be denied and removed,” he said. “I made a video pretending to trip over a metal trash can and the video was removed due to ‘dangerous acts’.” (A version of that video still exists on tiktok as a duet with himself.)
She has since uploaded the clip to Instagram, expressing her reluctance to continue making videos on tiktok due to constant concerns about creating content that could be removed, but also detailed the struggle of having to start from scratch on another platform.
“It’s gotten to the point where I hate pushing myself at something and being afraid of whether or not it’s going to be removed,” he added. “It’s horrible, it’s really horrible, and I’m really upset because a lot of people really enjoyed that audio. there were a lot of videos under that audio and they all disappeared due to community guideline violations that don’t make any sense.”
He said that while other tiktokers have been supportive of his current issues with tiktok, it’s something many creators are more than familiar with.
“This has been extremely common and very frustrating not only for me, but also for many other creators,” he added in a direct message. “I do comedy content on tik tok, but my heart really goes out to people trying to send important messages through tik tok who are silenced due to unclear or misapplied community guidelines.”
the daily dot reached out to tiktok for comment.
I don’t know your meme
