TikTok now blocks search outcomes for #SkinnyTok

TikTok not shows search outcomes for the hashtag #SkinnyTok. Critics who supported this block stated some movies with that label had been selling disordered consuming and different unhealthy or dangerous weight loss program behaviors. We have reached out to TikTok for touch upon this improvement.

France’s Minister of State for Digital Affairs Clara Chappaz was one of many politicians main the in opposition to this explicit hashtag. She has been campaigning in opposition to #SkinnyTok with each French and EU regulators since . “These movies selling excessive thinness are revolting and completely unacceptable,” Chappaz stated. “Digital instruments are marvellous when it comes to progress and freedom, however badly used they will shatter lives … the social networks can’t escape their accountability.”

Whereas blocking search outcomes for probably dangerous hashtags is a optimistic step, it solely locations hurdles within the path of people that wish to hunt down related movies. “Customers are savvy,” Cornell College professor Brooke Erin Duffy advised The New York Occasions. “They know tips on how to work these platforms and tips on how to evade their content material moderation programs.”

A block on one hashtag is simply the newest in TikTok’s piecemeal strategy towards content material that might encourage consuming problems. In 2020 it positioned which may “promote a damaging or dangerous physique picture,” corresponding to fasting apps and weight reduction dietary supplements. TikTok started a with the Nationwide Consuming Dysfunction Affiliation in 2021 to supply extra sources for customers with consuming problems. Later that yr, it additionally launched a brand new to the For You web page in an effort to scale back the impression of watching too many repeated clips on a damaging matter.