The U.S. Department of Justice may be suing TikTok, and the app may be banned in the country by January, but that isn't stopping the app from adding new features. As it happens, there are two brand new options coming to DMs that may make messaging other TikTok users easier and more fun: stickers and group chats.
TikTok stickers
TikTok stickers are, as you'd expect, graphics you can share in DMs on TikTok. If you're familiar with stickers in other chat apps and platforms, such as the sticker creator on iOS, TikTok's options appear to be quite similar.
On TikTok, you can choose to make stickers either static or animated. As long as you're 18 or older, you can upload your stickers (called "sticker sets" on TikTok) to the sticker store, so other users can try them out in their DMs. You can browse other sticker sets to use for yourself, as well, if you don't feel like making your own. Sticker sets can contain up to 24 stickers at once, and each file can be up to 3MB in size.
In addition, you can create stickers from videos on TikTok. The same deal applies here, except you only need to be 16 or older to create video stickers. (No clear reason is given here as to why there's an age discrepancy between video stickers and normal stickers.)
You can learn more about making stickers on TikTok from the company's support page here.
Group chats on TikTok
While stickers are great, there's bigger news here: TikTok is rolling out group chats on the platform for the first time. Rather than send videos and messages to friends individually, you can now create group chats with up to 32 users at once.
Unfortunately, not all users will be able to use TikTok's new group chats. For users ages 13 to 15, group chats will be totally unavailable. For users ages 16 and 17, there are some restrictions in place: While these users can be added to a group chat by their TikTok friends, they won't be able to join a group via link share unless they have at least one mutual friend in that group. If so, they will not be automatically added to the group; rather, they'll need to actively join in order to chat. In addition, teens who create a group chat will have to manually approve any new members.
Applying strict rules to younger users makes sense for the company, especially in the face of the DoJ's lawsuit: The government alleges TikTok illegally collected data from users under 13 without their parents' permission, violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. If TikTok is going to roll out new ways for kids to message each other on the platform, it makes sense to implement guardrails.
Users 18 and older will still need to be friends with users in order to accept invites to group chats, unless you've chosen No one on your DM privacy settings. And, importantly, while TikTok says DMs use encryption, end-to-end encryption is not currently available. In short, assume nothing you send other people on TikTok will remain private forever. (Of course, that's good advice for all internet use, regardless of encryption levels.)
While group chats don't yet appear to be up and running on my app, it does appear to be a similar process to starting a direct message with one friend: From your Inbox tab, you can tap the Chat button, but rather than select one user to chat with, you can select multiple names. You can also choose a name from your Messages list, then choose More options to add more people to the chat. Finally, hit Start group chat to get chatting.