Why So Many TikTok Posts Are Labeled “Fake Body”

Starting with the release of Photoshop and the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s, we’ve all become accustomed to seeing “fake” photos of people, created by editing one person’s head onto another’s body. The much more recent availability of artificial intelligence software has taken the creation of fake pictures and videos to an entirely new (and believable) level.

That’s not why lots of TikTok videos with “fake body” in their captions or descriptions are commonly seen on the social media platform, however. The “fake body” trend has escalated in the last few years, and it’s actually a hack that’s been discovered by clever TikTok users. 

Even if you haven’t done a deep dive into TikTok’s terms and conditions or Community Guidelines, you only have to spend a little time on the app to know that there are strict prohibitions against posting partial or full nudity.

And appending “fake body” to a video may help some content creators avoid running afoul of those rules and receiving penalties or complete bans on their TikTok accounts.

What Does Fake Body Mean on TikTok?

In a nutshell, labeling content as “Fake Body” (usually with “caution” emojis before and after the term) is an attempt to fool the TikTok algorithms, which are tasked with sniffing out partial or full nudity and assessing penalties. Even pictures of women in bikinis may be flagged for violations.

Many users are now trying to circumvent the nudity ban by prominently featuring the “fake body” phrase in the captions and descriptions of TikTok content containing partial nudity, often with a #fakebody hashtag as well.

The bikini photos we just mentioned might not be considered “offensive” enough to warrant this precaution, but adding the phrase can have the added benefit of attracting surfers who notice the caption and stop to check out what’s going on. Some users have gone one extra step for that reason, labeling innocuous content “fake body” just to bring in eyeballs.

Does the “fake body” hack work? People who’ve used it report mixed results, possibly because some of TikTok’s censorship is automated and some is done by human moderators.

The cat-and-mouse game between TikTok users trying to sidestep the app’s rules and the algorithms trying to enforce them will never end, though. If “fake body” no longer works to protect videos with partial nudity, rest assured that another hack will quickly pop up.