TikTok comedian, Hassan Khadair, is best known for his foul-mouthed puppet rendition of Disney character, Mickey Mouse. Building a following of over 5.3 million, the 22-year-old took to Instagram this week after TikTok reportedly removed 30 of his drafts.
“I made 30 plus new videos, not for f*cking TikTok,” Hassan told his followers on Instagram stories. “I filmed them and drafted on TikTok, but I intended them to go up on YouTube first because YouTube is a platform that treats me okay.”
Hassan explained that after saving the clips as TikTok drafts, he intended to screen-record the footage and edit it into YouTube Shorts— a pilot program launched late last year to compete with TikTok. Somewhere along the way, however, his drafts were flagged by TikTok and deleted.
Hassan’s experience highlights a growing concern amongst creators who find the platform to be unpredictable, especially for those relying on the app for income. According to a transparency report by TikTok, an estimated 11 million accounts were removed by the platform in the first quarter of 2021. An estimated four million have been banned for dubious reasons.
Hassan told Centennial Beauty that he has been banned several times on TikTok for elapsed periods and unknown reasons— most recently in mid-September. His account was reinstated 9 days later after posting about the ban on Instagram.
“I would have got between $15K-20K, at that point, I was gaining followers at an egregious rate”, Hassan says of the income he lost from his September ban. This refers to lost income from TikTok’s Creator Fund— an in-app monetisation strategy implemented by TikTok last year that pays creators based on a variety of factors including views and engagement.
While there is no way to substantiate this claim, Hassan says that TikTok changed its platform guidelines “dramatically” in July 2021 which has impacted creators regardless of the nature of their content. He claims it was around then that he began experiencing issues with his account and videos.
“Please help me spread the word [that] hundred[s] of TikTok’s tops creators are being affected by this and all TikTok has done in response is close channels of communication,” he recently wrote on Instagram. “Let’s hold them accountable.”