The TikTok Term “YT” Doesn’t Mean What You Might Think

It’s only natural for newer TikTok users who come across the term “YT” to assume it’s a reference to a competing social media platform.

YT is a commonly-used acronym for YouTube, and in many ways, TikTok and YouTube are similar. They’re both top-five social apps worldwide, they both focus on video content, their algorithms recommend posts based on past user behavior and preferences, and they’re each home to large numbers of influencers seeking to earn money from user interactions.

For all of those reasons, it would seem that YouTube would be a common topic of discussion on TikTok. It’s not, and the term “YT” usually doesn’t refer to the video platform when it’s used on TikTok.

It has a very different meaning — and not a pleasant one, either.

What Does YT Mean on TikTok?

TikTok’s Community Guidelines prohibit content and speech that support or foster racism and racial stereotypes, hate speech, and the dehumanization of individuals or groups based on attributes like race, ethnicity, and national origin.

The platform is particularly sensitive to race-based issues; in 2020, TikTok apologized to the app’s Black community after multiple complaints that content from Black creators was being throttled or was otherwise prevented from receiving equal exposure.

Both automated and human moderation are used to detect, discover, or investigate potential violations, and those responsible can be penalized or banned from the app. Racial slurs and attacks are among those that receive priority from the system’s moderators.

Intolerant users, however, often search for ways to circumvent the TikTok rules. One of their favorite workarounds is to come up and popularize synonyms for potentially-offensive words and phrases.

That brings us to the use of “YT” on TikTok. Rather than a legitimate acronym, it’s what’s known as a “backronym,” a term deliberately created to sound like an existing word. And if you read “YT” as if it’s a word, you’ll understand its meaning on the app. When read aloud, it sounds like “whitey.”

YT is most often used as an offensive, derogatory racial slur on TikTok. The platform doesn’t automatically remove videos or comments using the term; it’s left alone if it’s simply used as a synonym for “white.” If it’s contained in posts believed to promote hate speech or a hateful ideology, however, moderators will delete the content and penalize the user who created it.

When it comes to deciphering the terms and language used on TikTok, things are often more complicated than you’d first think. “YT” is a perfect example — and one that should be avoided.