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Fishing content creator “Joel-O Shotz” built an audience of around 10,000 followers on the app by livestreaming himself fishing in open lakes, rivers, and creeks. He started making money on the app by offering fishing baits through TikTok Shop, selling around 92 strawberry- and sweet-corn-flavored “little bitz,” for instance.
But lately, TikTok has slapped the seller with a series of violation claims that have made it harder for him to sell on the app. In repeated notices, he was told that he incorrectly categorized his products by tagging them as “fishing,” per documentation viewed by Business Insider. The penalties, which he successfully appealed in each instance, caused his product listings to deactivate.
“It was really confusing when I first started the shop because I had to figure out and wade my way through all of the violations to figure out what I could and couldn’t say,” he told BI. “You’ll be selling a product and then all of a sudden it’ll be suspended for violations of being in the wrong category.”
TikTok, in recent months, has been sending a flurry of violation claims to sellers that use its e-commerce platform, stating that they’ve set “spam prices” on products, inadequately displayed items during livestreams, assigned inaccurate product-listing titles, or incorrectly categorized their goods.
The company uses a blend of automation and human moderation to identify infractions and communicate to sellers, making it a headache to appeal decisions and get products back up for sale, sellers say.
“TikTok product violations are nearly enough to make me walk away,” one merchant who sells children’s products on TikTok Shop told BI. This person requested anonymity to avoid damaging their relationship with the company. “It’s so frustrating to continually be flagged by bots for bogus issues.”
TikTok’s violations spree comes as the company has taken other steps to ramp up the efficiency and profitability of its e-commerce marketplace in ways that could draw the ire of sellers. The company plans to increase its fees for merchants later this year, for example, The Information reported. These changes could disproportionately impact small business owners that operate on tighter profit margins.
Small businesses have been key early adopters of TikTok Shop
Small-business owners have been the lifeblood of TikTok Shop as it’s rolled out in the US, particularly as some larger brands have been wary of testing out a new platform.
TikTok Shop officially launched in the US in September after months of testing and previous rollouts in other countries like the UK and Singapore. The platform blends Amazon-style shopping with short-form video and livestreaming, often deploying influencers to help sell goods. The company has grand ambitions for Shop in 2024, shooting for billions in sales this year, Bloomberg reported.
But policing Shop has proven challenging for the company, which said last quarter it had over 200,000 sellers in its marketplace. Some sellers have managed to slip prohibited goods like homemade foods, sex toys, and THC syrups past its moderation system, while other merchants have added knock-off products mimicking items from mainstream brands like Lululemon.
TikTok’s strategy to combat bad actors is to deploy a mix of human and automated moderation. But lately, its AI detection system has run amok, Shop sellers told BI.
Sellers on TikTok receive “violation points” for infractions that get assigned in different amounts based on the severity of a violation. A total of 48 points leads to an outright ban, but a single violation could lead TikTok to block a product from being sold, a consequential outcome for a seller if it’s one of their best-selling items. Many of TikTok Shop’s earliest sellers are small or midsize businesses whose livelihoods can be thrown off by an overly aggressive moderation system.
Violation points can be applied to a wide swath of circumstances that make it difficult for sellers to keep pace while also running their businesses. Some have received violation points for failing to ship items within a three-day window in the US, for example, which can create serious consequences for merchants.
“We had an LDR (late dispatch rate) penalty put on our account right as we were hitting our peak in sales,” said Jessica Slone, founder of Bad Addiction Boutique, a merchant that has sold tens of thousands of sweatshirts on TikTok. “This violation took us out at the kneecaps,” she said.
After receiving a violation, the first path to appeal for many sellers is to use TikTok Shop’s chat feature. Several TikTok Shop merchants told BI that it felt like submitting a ticket through the creator center felt like a dead end.
The chat support creates tickets that TikTok doesn’t always follow up on, making it feel like there is virtually no seller support, the children’s product seller told BI.
A TikTok spokesperson said the company investigates tickets and takes corrective actions where applicable.
Sellers that have dedicated contacts either at TikTok or a TikTok Shop-approved agency usually get their violations resolved faster.
Anastasia Wesselink Moellering, who sells wellness products like aromatherapy sprays on TikTok Shop via her Chicago-area wellness studio The Healing Heart, said she worked with a TikTok Shop partner firm called Outlandish to get an incorrect-product-category violation appealed quickly.
“Initially, it was frustrating because we selected the product category that TikTok’s AI recommended when setting up our product listing,” she said. “Within a few days, they had successfully appealed the violation on our behalf, and TikTok restored our product listing. This did not have a significant impact on us as a business because it was a relatively new product.”
The TikTok spokesperson said the company enforces its policies through a combination of technology and human moderation, and all appeals are human-reviewed. The company has dedicated teams of account managers and seller support staff to help resolve issues and navigate appeals, they said.
TikTok’s use of automated tools to police its listings isn’t unique in the e-commerce world. Amazon uses bots to flag potential violations of its policies, which can lead to sellers’ accounts being deactivated, sometimes taking business owners by surprise. Etsy also uses automation to review listings that could violate its policies, but it does not remove a listing until an employee has reviewed it. And, while Shopify operates a bit differently because it’s not a marketplace, it has outlined plans to use AI throughout its business, including for many interactions with its merchants.
For small-business owners on TikTok, having to take time to repeatedly appeal Shop violations is a strain alongside the day-to-day work of fulfilling orders.
“Most people, I’ll be honest, would’ve given up already,” the fishing-bait salesperson, Joel, who goes only by his first name online, said of appealing Shop violation claims. “I almost did, but I like the challenge.”
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