X-Tian: ten-year ban for satirical cartoons

Update 10/10/2024: 7:48p.m.

This note was modified after it became known that, following the appeal, the last of the contents was reinstated.

Colombian cartoonist X-Tian, known for his graphic opinion work in Publimetro and El Espectador, has always boasted that he has never been censored in any media, no matter how critical or controversial his cartoons may be. However, in recent weeks, the situation has begun to change due to some sanctions in TikTok.

In less than a week, two of his posts have been removed from the platform. In early October, the cartoonist received a notification from the platform that one of his content had been removed for violating the "Hate Speech and Displays" policy. It concerned a video posted in the middle of the year, during the Paris Olympics, in which X-Tian depicted Turkey, Israel, Sudan, Congo, Azerbaijan and China as Olympic champions in genocide. In the "caricature", as X-Tian calls them, there was no graphic violence, but drawings of leaders and figures of dead and displaced people due to international wars, internal armed conflicts and repressive policies in those countries. 

TikTok' s hate rule prohibits content that, among other things, dehumanizes people, slanders people, or encourages violence on the basis of a protected characteristic such as nationality. Although X-Tian's video did not violate any of these rules, it is possible that, by referring to violent acts and different nationalities, it may have been misidentified as a form of hate speech.  

The platform offered him the possibility to appeal, but the cartoonist preferred not to do so. He accepted the charges, as he himself says, not because he agreed with the measure but because it acted on him an inhibitory effect, as he preferred that his content be removed before risking that his account suffer a more drastic sanction in that social network, where some of his videos accumulate hundreds of thousands of reproductions.

In reality, appealing a sanction on social networks would not necessarily result in a higher penalty, but X-Tian had reason to be wary at TikTok. In June of this year, he had faced a similar situation. A "caricantion" denouncing the human rights violations of the Nayib Bukele government in El Salvador had been removed for also violating the platform's hate policies. So said part of the lyrics of the song that accompanied the drawings:

All his opponents became villains 

and relentlessly tramples on human rights. 

With its prisons it demonstrates severe efficiency, 

thus imprisoning innocent people and democracy itself.

At that time, X-Tian appealed and within minutes the content was reinstated. To give him a boost, he invested just under $10 in advertising to increase his reach on the platform. Immediately, a notification arrived stating that his account's monetization features would be temporarily suspended "until June 10, 2034." 

X-Tian asked twice for a review of this measure, but on both occasions he was told that the decision would stand for not complying with the rules of political advertising, which prohibit candidates or parties to advertise on TikTok, a conduct unrelated to his video. "There are Colombian politicians who have paid less for stealing," the cartoonist points out. 

The rules for ads on social networks tend to be stricter than those for content, however, X-Tian's video does not seem to violate these policies, which expressly allow "advocating for the end of wars, armed conflicts and raising awareness about the situation of their victims". In any case, Bukele's "caricature", which originated this situation, continues to accumulate reproductions without any problem.

X-Tian's works are published at the same time in different platforms, but so far no other platform has presented him with these problems. The fear of losing these platforms -where he may have more reach than in the media where he works- has led him to modify his own publications and to camouflage his contents. 

To cure himself, on October 8, he posted on TikTok an animation about the Israeli and Palestinian attacks, presented as a children's story starring sheep. In the text accompanying the publication, X-Tian wrote: "Since on certain platforms you can't talk about certain topics, this caricature has nothing to do with politics, any country and its practices". However, a few hours later, the platform again removed the video under the hate rule. On this last occasion, it requested a review of the case, claiming that it was an excessive sanction, and the next day the publication was reinstated.