Filtered Messages Don't Make it to Your TikTok DMs, but There Are Ways to Find Them

Like all social media platforms, TikTok works hard to make sure its users have an optimal experience on the platform. One of the main ways that TikTok does that is by filtering the direct messages that you actually get notified about.

TikTok is filtering messages for a variety of reasons based on your user settings. For all the messages you receive that don't meet those settings, though, you get a filtered message request. That way, you can see the messages if you'd like to, or ignore them completely. Unfortunately, some people don't know how to actually access their filtered messages. Here's what we know.

If you navigate to your inbox on TikTok, you should see a button that says "Message requests." If you click that button, you should see another that says "Filtered requests." That button should give you access to all the messages that have been filtered out of your account proper. Once you're on the page with the filtered requests, you can decide whether you want to accept, reject, or report the individual requests.

Those requests can come in all shapes and forms, but for the most part, they're probably not messages you wanted to see. Depending on the size of your account, you might find that you have tons of filtered requests, and those requests could be everything from questions from people you don't know to things that are far creepier. Of course, if the content in those messages is more than just skeezy, you can always report it.

Although there are plenty of people who likely get very few social media messages from people they don't know, there are some people who would be bombarded from DMs of all kinds if they weren't able to filter which messages actually hit their inbox. Filtered messages ensure that you can see the messages that wouldn't otherwise hit your inbox, even if you wouldn't normally be all that interested in their content.

In fact, some users have even started making videos featuring these messages, either because the content of them is alarming or because it's funny in some way. There are plenty of people who didn't even know this feature existed, and these videos have helped them realize that they do.

If you never had a desire to look at your filtered messages, or you realized that you don't have any, that's not a big deal. Most people don't look at them for a reason. If you're looking to make a quick video out of the messages that you were trying to avoid, though, now you know how.

Filtered messages are designed to make your overall experience on TikTok more pleasant. In an era when everything is content, though, it probably shouldn't be surprising that even the messages you probably don't want have been turned into fodder for the algorithm.