Growth5 min read
TikTok Community Guidelines and the For You Feed Ineligibility List
TikTok publishes two documents. One says what gets removed; the other says what is allowed to stay and will not be recommended, and the second one is longer.
The TikTok community guidelines decide whether a video is removed. A second, separately published set decides whether it is eligible for the For You feed — and that one covers content the guidelines allow. A video can be entirely within the rules, stay up, and still be shown to almost nobody.
Two documents, two outcomes
| Community Guidelines | For You feed eligibility | |
|---|---|---|
| Decides | Whether the video is removed | Whether it is recommended |
| Outcome | Removal, strike, ban | Views collapse to followers and search |
| Notification | Yes, in the inbox | None |
| Appeal | Yes | No route |
| Breadth | Prohibited content | Wider: allowed but not recommendable |
TikTok publishes both, and the ineligibility criteria are documented alongside the guidelines themselves (TikTok). Reading the second document is the part almost nobody does, and it is where the answer usually is.
What is on the ineligibility list
The categories that catch ordinary creators, rather than the obvious prohibited ones:
- Engagement bait. Asking for follows, likes, comments or shares rather than earning them.
Named explicitly, and the easiest thing on this list to write by accident.
- Sexually suggestive content that is allowed to remain but not recommended.
- Regulated goods discussed or shown, including tobacco, alcohol and cannabis in
territories where it is legal.
- Dangerous acts and challenges, including in a warning frame. Naming the act is enough.
- Unverified claims, particularly health and financial ones.
- Low-quality or duplicated content, including reposts with a watermark from another
platform.
- Overtly commercial content that reads as an advert without being one.
The last two are worth a second read. A repost carrying another platform's watermark and a video that is entirely a product pitch are both ordinary creator behaviour, and both are on the list.
Checking a caption against the TikTok community guidelines
The caption is the part of a TikTok that is text, and text is the part you can check before posting. It is also where engagement bait and unverified claims live.
FreeMentioned in this article
Community Guidelines CheckerWhich published guideline your caption is standing near, before you post it.Pick TikTok and it weights the categories the way TikTok's own documents do — engagement bait hardest, because that is what its ineligibility list names.
Be clear about what that can and cannot do. TikTok's moderation watches the video, hears the audio, reads the on-screen text and reads the comments. This reads a caption. A clean result is a prompt to move on, not permission, and a flagged word is a category rather than a verdict.
Three categories carry no vocabulary at all — hate speech, harassment and misinformation — because they are decided by who a statement is about and what it claims, and any word list for them would be wrong in both directions.
Where the caption is not the problem
Three common causes that no text check will find:
On-screen text. TikTok reads it. A caption you cleaned up does nothing if the same phrase is burned into the first frame.
The watermark. A video exported from another app with its logo still on it falls under the duplicated-content criterion. Export clean.
The sound. A removed or restricted audio track takes the video's reach with it, and the video itself is untouched.
The hashtag block is a separate check
A caption can be clean and the tags not. Restricted and action-limited tags behave differently from banned ones, and most of the lists circulating online are copies of copies — banned hashtags covers what is actually knowable.
FreeMentioned in this article
Banned Hashtag CheckerFour things can be wrong with a hashtag. Only one of them is “banned”.It sorts a set into four groups with different standing, and says which is which rather than presenting a guess as a fact. The per-network count limits are in how many hashtags, and the TikTok-specific set is in tiktok hashtags.
What to do about a video that is already up
Deleting it is usually the wrong move and is the first thing people reach for.
A video that is ineligible for the For You feed is not damaging your account — it is simply not being recommended. Deleting it removes whatever views and engagement it did earn, and removes the only evidence you have about what triggered it. Leave it and change the next one.
If the cause is in the caption, edit the caption rather than reposting. If it is the watermark or the on-screen text, that video is what it is; export the next one clean.
Reposting the same video with a fixed caption is the option worth being careful about, because a near-identical second upload is itself on the duplicated-content criterion. If you do it, wait, change the opening frames as well as the words, and accept that the second version starts from nothing.
The account-level picture matters more than any single video: TikTok's account standing page in the app shows whether you have active violations, and an account with none is not being held back by anything on this list.
The equivalent two-rulebook structure on Meta is in instagram community guidelines, and the wider TikTok questions are in tiktok growth.
Why is my TikTok not getting views?
Most often the video is allowed to stay but is ineligible for the For You feed - engagement bait in the caption, a watermark from another app, or a subject on the published ineligibility list. None of those sends a notification.
Does TikTok tell you if a video is not recommended?
No. Removal is notified in your inbox; ineligibility is silent and has no appeal route.
Is a watermark from another app really a problem?
It falls under the duplicated-content criterion in the eligibility documentation. Exporting without a watermark is the fix and it costs nothing.
Does asking for follows really reduce reach?
TikTok names follow-and-engagement bait in its ineligibility criteria, so this is one of the few reach effects the platform describes in its own words.
Paste the caption into the community guidelines checker with TikTok selected, then check the tag block on its own.
Put it to work
Tools for the job you just read about
Free to run, most of them without an account.
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Community Guidelines Checker
Which published guideline your caption is standing near, before you post it.
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Banned Hashtag Checker
Four things can be wrong with a hashtag. Only one of them is “banned”.
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How often the phrase appears, and — the part that matters — how early.
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See your title and description as a Google result — on a desktop and a phone.
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Social Media URL Cleaner
Strip the tracking off a link — and see what each parameter was telling somebody.
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Instagram Money Calculator
What to charge for a post — priced the way a brand actually prices it.
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