York teen beauty queen has TikTok account banned after posting videos about her acne

A beauty queen from York has had her TikTok account banned after posting videos of her acne with the aim of promoting body positivity.

Eva Grant, 16, began her TikTok account in November last year in order to make videos about her experience with acne.

She said she took care to make sure all of her videos were in keeping with TikTok community guidelines but received a notification three weeks later to say her account had been banned from the platform.

Ms Grant said: "At first it got me down, especially when there is content on TikTok that shouldn't be on the app.

"There are things that people shouldn't be watching but it's still on there and they've deleted me, so at first it got me down, I was like 'why have they done this to me, I'm trying to do good'.

"But I switched it and I was like 'no I'm going to beat them and I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it better'."

Following the deletion of her old account Ms Grant created a new profile called @porfectionx which features all of the same content of her previous one.

She said: "It's a bit weird how one account was deleted for breaking guidelines but the account that's on there new is still on there.

"It's telling people that they shouldn't be open about their skin.

"Today we live in a society where it's the normal to have clear skin and society says it is, but in reality it's not.

"I'm trying to change society and say that it's normal to have unclear skin because in reality no one's perfect we all have these flaws and all these flaws make us unique."

TikTok told ITV Ms Grant's account was banned for "multiple violations" of community guidelines.

Ms Grant was the title holder of UK National Junior Miss in 2021 and is currently the title holder of Miss Teen York Galaxy.

Although her acne doesn't hold her back now, she said this wasn't always the case.

She said: "I myself used to get really down about my acne, I never wanted to leave the house.

"I didn't want to go out without make up on, it really got me down. I used to think I wasn't pretty in my own skin.

"I don't know what happened, I just woke up one day and said 'no I am beautiful and I am beautiful in my own skin'.

"My message to other people is, everyone is beautiful in their own way, your flaws make you different, they make you unique, they make you who you are and you shouldn't have to change yourself to fit in to society.

"Just be yourself because being yourself is honestly the best thing you can do because you are beautiful in you own way."

Ms Grant said that TikTok should be more cautious about the content they are deleting.

She said: "If there's just a robot deleting accounts the robot doesn't know what it's deleting so they need to double check what they're deleting because they could be deleting accounts that are doing good - like my own.

"I think the message is to double check what you're deleting."

TikTok said Ms Grant's account was not banned due to the content of the videos, but "spam activity on the account" instead.

TikTok told ITV that following further investigation, the account was not banned for violating its policies on graphic content, but for suspected spam activity on the account. This was done in error and the account has been reinstated.

TikTok said that the original account ban was therefore not related to Eva's acne content and the word "gruesome" was not used when notifying her of the ban.

Ms Grant said her original TikTok account did not breach any spam guidelines and that when her account was reinstated, spam activity was never mentioned to her.

She said: "It was clear that in their initial response it was due to content and breaching guidelines.

"When they first responded they confirmed the error and at no time did they mention spam or bots. Their response has changed."

TikTok were contacted for a response.

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